The courts are looking for alternatives to allow criminal cases to proceed as much as possible now that the Public Prosecution Service is disconnected from the internet, the Council for the Judiciary announced on Friday.
The Public Prosecution Service (OM) has been disconnected from the internet since Thursday evening due to a vulnerability in the systems. As a result, employees outside OM locations cannot log in, and there are also restrictions at OM locations.
On Friday, courts and courts of appeal helped the OM by, for example, printing documents for prosecutors. “In criminal cases, it is important that all parties have the same information,” a spokesperson for the Council for the Judiciary told press agency ANP. As far as is known, no lawsuits have been postponed.
How long the OM will remain offline is still unclear. The investigation into vulnerabilities in the system continues. The OM disconnected all systems from the internet on Thursday after a warning from the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) about the Citrix NetScalers, the system that gives employees online access to the office environment.
The NCSC already warned last month about the vulnerability in the system and called on users to install a patch. The OM says it has done so. However, a further analysis by the NCSC pointed to “possible misuse” of the vulnerability, after which the systems were disconnected.