THE HAGUE (AP) — A network glitch at the Dutch defence ministry caused a widespread IT outage across the country on Wednesday, grounding planes, blocking civil servants' access to computers and forcing police officers to text each other.
The scope and cause of the problem are still unknown, but a Dutch Defense Ministry spokesman confirmed the issue lay with one of the country's systems.
“There is an outage in one of the defence ministry's networks, which is also used by other parts of the Dutch government,” Laurens Bos told The Associated Press.
The National Cyber Security Centre said it was still unclear whether the outage was the result of a cyber attack.
At Eindhoven airport in the south, low-cost airlines Ryanair and Transavia cancelled flights, stranding travellers since early morning. “There is no air traffic at all and little information about the cause,” spokeswoman Judith de Roy said.
The airport also serves as a military airport operated by the Ministry of Defence. No problems have been reported at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, the largest airport in the Netherlands.
Some passengers from Eindhoven were taken by bus to Brussels airport, 100 miles south of Belgium.
Communications systems for warning and emergency workers were also affected, with the Coast Guard saying it had no telephone or radio contact and that officers were communicating by mobile phone and text messages rather than the regular communication systems.
No problems were reported by hospitals, the national tax office or the national emergency number 112.
Telecommunications company KPN also suffered major disruptions to its mobile services, but the company said it was unclear whether the problem was linked to the defence ministry's issues.
The Defense Ministry said it was unclear how long the outage would last.
