Belgium's tax agency confirms cyberattack, pulls services offline

Belgium's finance and tax agency, FOD Financiën, confirmed a cyberattack on Wednesday and pulled several digital services offline, including its main online tax portal, MyMinfin. The agency said the move was needed to limit risks and allow technical work to secure its systems. It also extended specific tax filing deadlines to November 16.

Services affected

FOD Financiën said MyMinfin, Tax-on-web and Biztax went offline after potentially infected elements were isolated. Spokesperson Francis Adyns told local news outlets that the attack was thwarted within hours. He said the attack could not be expanded enough within the agency's environment to take over applications or gain access to data.

Deadline change

The agency said the outage affects the October 31 extended deadline for specific types of income, such as sole traders and earnings from foreign companies. That deadline has been extended to November 16, by which time MyMinfin should be back up and running. A large part of the agency's other applications remains available with full or partial functionality.

Data and investigation

FOD Financiën said there are no indications that a data breach has occurred or that data has been compromised, but that this aspect is being closely investigated. It said data protection is a top priority. The agency is monitoring the situation and working to make affected services available again as soon as possible.

Sources: The Register