Dutch political websites hit by cyber attacks as EU voting starts

The 2024 European Parliament election commenced in the Netherlands on June 6 and will continue through June 9 across other EU countries. Cyberattacks, specifically DDoS attacks, have been observed targeting multiple election or politically-related Internet properties during this period. Notably, a pro-Russian hacker group called HackNeT claimed responsibility for the cyberattacks on Dutch political party websites. Cloudflare systems detected and mitigated these attacks, which reached over 1 billion HTTP requests in the Netherlands. The main DDoS attack peaked at 73,000 requests per second (rps) on June 5. Geopolitical motivations often influence cyberattacks during elections or times of conflict.