Belgian Tax Agency Takes Services Offline After Cyberattack, Extends Filing Deadline

Belgium's finance and tax agency, FOD Financiën, has confirmed a cyberattack and pulled several digital services offline. The agency's main online tax portal, MyMinfin, is among the affected services. The agency said the shutdown helps limit risks and allows technical teams to carry out the work needed to secure its systems. A large part of its other applications remains available with full or partial functionality.

The outage has a direct effect on taxpayers. An October 31 extended deadline for certain filings, such as those from sole traders and people with earnings from foreign companies, has been moved to November 16. The agency expects MyMinfin to be running again by then.

The investigation is at an early stage and little detail has been released. The agency says there are currently no indications that a data breach occurred or that data was compromised, though this is still being investigated. A spokesperson told local media the attack was stopped within hours and could not spread far enough to take over applications or reach data. Potentially infected elements were isolated, which took MyMinfin, Tax-on-web and Biztax offline. The agency says services must be restored in an isolated environment, which will take considerable time and care to rule out new risks.

This summary covers only the opening of the original report.