Thousands of computers and related IT systems in the Netherlands came to a standstill yesterday after a software testing glitch caused a major outage as it appeared an error in software coding had been missed.
Among the affected businesses and operations were Eindhoven Airport, the country’s second-largest airport, which was forced to delay or cancel all of its flights.
Several major government agencies were also impacted, including the Dutch coastguard as well as the country’s military police and some agencies related to the Ministry of Defence.
In addition, numerous other businesses were impacted, ranging from public service agencies in Utrecht to national train operations in and out of the cities of Amsterdam and The Hague, as well as cargo handling services in the port of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest.
Dutch emergency services also experienced a nationwide outage as its telephone, alarm and communication systems were all impacted.
Software testing glitch
While government officials initially speculated a cyber attack could have been the cause of the major outage, it is becoming increasingly clear a glitch in the automated software testing procedures of the Dutch military, which controls a range of digital infrastructure systems, may have shut down the impacted systems.
A host of businesses and agencies ‘surf’ on the military-controlled software systems. A spokeswoman for Eindhoven Airport admitted that “if they are impacted, we are impacted. They control the software testing ecosystem, there is nothing we can do about that.”
The Dutch Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed the disruption last night, citing “an IT problem.”
“Engineers are experiencing problems and in some cases there is an impact on service provisions,” although the spokesman would not elaborate or address the cause of the issue.
However, the Dutch National Cybersecurity Center told local media that there was no evidence of any cyberattack, and stressed that “one outage could be contributing to the other.”
This means the glitch in the automated software testing procedures of the MoD’s infrastructure directly and automatically impacted related and linked digital ecosystems.
Late last night, the Dutch Minister of Defence, Ruben Brekelmans, put out a statement which confirmed his department’s software systems had failed.
“The cause of the problem lays in access to our NAFIN network. As an error in a software code was missed in our testing environment, we could no longer correspond with NAFIN,” Brekelmans wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“There is no reason to believe any third party was behind this honest mistake. We are working hard to test our systems and to restore any normal communication,” the minister stated.
CrowdStrike drama
The incident strongly resembles the much-talked about global CrowdStrike outage, on July 19, when airlines, banks, and media outlets around the world were thrown into chaos by one of the largest IT outages in recent years.
Numerous industries and sectors were impacted, ranging from flight delays in Amsterdam to malfunctioning ATMs in Barcelona, mobile payment networks failing in Kenya and cargo ships unable to leave ports across North America. Particularly the U.S. was heavily affected by the major IT glitch.
As a result, banks, financial services firms and a host of other actors in a range of sectors scrambled to review their QA policies and strategies following the global IT outage.
In a major development that put the spotlight further on software testing tools, CrowdStrike – the company at the heart of July’s digital drama – is being sued by a number of its own shareholders over earlier claims the firm made with regards to its QA strategy.
The investors argue that the cybersecurity company defrauded them by covering up how its software testing tools may have caused the major IT crash in July, as more than eight million computers worldwide went down, mostly in North America.
The legal petition sums up a range of “severe deficiencies” within the update process for CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor software, which was implicated in the widespread disruptions experienced by users across numerous sectors.
When approached by QA Financial, CrowdStrike declined to discuss the details of the legal complaint but did say “we believe this case lacks merit and we will vigorously defend the company”.
The company has been in full damage control mode since the incident as the company keeps stressing it was merely a simple bug that caused the CrowdStrike / Microsoft drama.
The bug greenlit content updates to CrowdStrike’s Falcon software when it should not have, leading to “problematic content” in a file that was shared and integrated by millions of Microsoft Windows devices all over the world, predominantly in the US, the world’s largest online market.
COUNTING DOWN
READ MORE
- EPAM sharpens finserv focus with acquisition of First Derivative
- QA Financial Forum Chicago 20205: a sitdown with GreatAmerica’s QA lead
- It’s a wrap: the QA Financial Forum Chicago 2025
- HDFC Bank turns to Katalon and QualityKiosk for QA upgrade
- Perforce’s Clinton Sprauve on AI testing for charts and graphics
Become a QA Financial subscriber – for FREE
News and interviews * Receive our weekly newsletter * Get priority invitations to our Forum events
