The municipality of Hof van Twente is responsible for millions of euros in damages incurred after the hack. Judge’s ruling today. She also has to pay €20,000 in legal costs, according to reports RTV East.

The municipality was hacked in 2020 and attempted to recover €4.2 million in damages from Switch IT Solutions, the company hired for the security of the municipality’s online systems. According to the municipality’s attorney, the company had delivered a “breach of contract”.

But according to the court, the rental company did what was in the contract. It was precisely the municipality that did not have things in order.

For example, independent research showed that it wasn’t really difficult for hackers: a municipal employee changed the servers’ administrator account password to “Welcome2020”. The protection of the systems, the firewall, was also modified by the municipality, so that hackers were free to control the computer systems.

The court ruled today that “the municipality opened a back door in the system that it manages and sets an easy-to-guess password for the door so that the guards do not interfere.”

The hack destroyed a total of ninety virtual servers and destroyed their backups. Finally, an international data restorer succeeded in recovering deleted files from the Departments of Civil Status, Social Affairs and Financial Department.