Belgium suffers DDoS cyberattack

Large parts of Belgium’s government IT network went down after a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattack on Belnet, the government-funded internet service provider (ISP) which provides internet connectivity for Belgian government organisations. Among 200 affected organisations were websites of the Belgian government, parliament, universities and research institutes. The organisations were partially or completely cut off from the internet, and its users unable to access these networks. As some news outlets – such as Computing and Sputnik noted – the attack disrupted a planned meeting of Belgian’s Foreign Affairs, which had been due to discuss the human rights situation in Xinjiang, China. Belnet has since stated that connectivity has been restored, but the culprit is unknown.