A total of 120 hackers tried to break into the systems of the municipality of The Hague on Tuesday 6 October, at the opening of the city’s cybersecurity week.
The attempts turned up several vulnerabilities and overdue updates, and most of those problems were resolved the same day.
Chain reaction
The exercise was the seventh edition of Hack The Hague, an event meant to improve the municipality’s cyber security.
Eighty professional hackers and forty students took part.
That large number of participants was based on the theme of the day, chain reaction, which refers to many small attacks that are fairly harmless on their own but together can cause major damage.
Alderman Adeel Mahmood, who holds the public services portfolio, called the event exciting and said the municipality had learned a great deal from it.
“We are constantly working on improving the security of our systems.
We cannot do that without the human creativity of both our own security experts and honest hackers.”
Lilian Knippenberg, who handles the municipality’s cybersecurity policy, added that she was very satisfied with the results.
“Hackers look at our systems with a fresh, critical eye and that produces insights we do not always see ourselves.”
Prize money and new specialists
To give the hackers an extra push to expose the city’s weak spots, the municipality shared out 17,000 euros in prize money among the people behind the most creative and the most effective hacks.
The day was also meant to draw students towards a career in cybersecurity, a field where demand for specialists is expected to grow further in the coming years.
