The Dutch government said Wednesday its main website is being hacked, and also confirmed that a man suspected of participating in another major cyberattack on Swiss-British anti-spam watchdog group Spamhaus has been extradited from Spain to the Netherlands.
The suspect, Sven Kamphuis, was arrested in Barcelona last month and extradited Monday, Justice Ministry spokesman Paul van der Zanden said. Kamphuis is currently before a judge in Rotterdam as prosecutors seek to have his detention extended by 14 days, Van der Zanden said.
He said Kamphuis, 35, is likely to face charges for directing large amounts of data at Spamhaus in an attempt to derail its servers, and for breaking into other people's computers.
Van der Zanden could not confirm that there was any link between the Kamphuis case and the coordinated attack on the government's website.
Robert Wester, a spokesman for the national government, said in an emailed response to questions that the attack began late Tuesday evening and got worse Wednesday morning.
The attack consisted of an unknown attacker or attackers trying to flood government computer servers with so many requests that they would become unreachable for regular traffic.
