The Public Prosecution Service (OM) may be disconnected from the internet for several weeks. The OM has been offline since Thursday due to a vulnerability in the systems. It is still unclear what this means for legal proceedings in the near future.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) discovered the vulnerability in Citrix NetScalers. This is the system that allows employees online access to the office environment. The systems have been disconnected as a precaution.
As a result, employees will not be able to log in outside OM locations for the time being. They are also not reachable by email, and other digital systems have limited functionality. As a result, employees had no access to files. Meanwhile, some case systems that provide access to files are available again.
Last week, district 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 the ANP.
No legal proceedings postponed yet
As far as is known, no legal proceedings have been postponed due to the disconnection from the internet. It is still unclear what the consequences will be for legal proceedings taking place today or in the coming weeks.
The scheduling of hearings and Council Chambers is given priority in any case. Agreements have also been made to allow urgent processes to proceed.
Furthermore, little information is known about the vulnerability, except that a solution is “complicated” and “requires a lot of time”.
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. Nevertheless, a further analysis by the NCSC pointed to “possible misuse” of the vulnerability, after which the systems were disconnected.