A wave of DDoS attacks briefly disrupted the websites of Belgian telecom operators Proximus and Scarlet on Wednesday morning, with the pro-Russian hacker group NoName057 claiming
responsibility. Ghent University Hospital (UZ Gent) also reported a simultaneous attack that slowed communication with several external systems.
Proximus spokesperson Fabrice Gansbeke said technicians first noticed abnormal traffic around 7:20 a.m. and quickly activated countermeasures. “From 7:30 onward, we saw a sharp rise in traffic. The impact was very limited: our systems held up,” he said.
A DDoS — or distributed denial-of-service — attack floods targeted websites with massive surges of traffic, overwhelming servers and forcing services offline. The technique does not compromise user data.
At 8:53 a.m., NoName057 boasted on Telegram that it had struck Proximus, Scarlet and even an internal Telenet portal. But Telenet spokesperson Stefan Coenjaerts disputed the claim, insisting that “our systems were not hacked and no websites went offline.”
The group referenced recent comments by Defence Minister Theo Francken in *Humo* magazine, where he warned that NATO would “flatten” Moscow if Russia attacked Brussels. “We advise the Belgian minister not to throw such statements around,” the hackers wrote.
The collective has repeatedly targeted Belgium. Ahead of last year’s October elections, it launched attacks for four consecutive days, and in March it briefly knocked several government websites offline.
Around the same time as Wednesday’s telecom incidents, UZ Gent said it faced a DDoS attack that slowed connections with external platforms, temporarily delaying some information exchanges. Internal hospital systems remained fully operational, limiting disruptions to patient care. While a few consultations started later than scheduled, treatments and procedures continued as normal. By roughly 11 a.m., external communications had been restored.
Other Belgian entities also reported cyberattacks, including the industrial printer manufacturer CP Bourg in Wavre and the municipality of Comines-Warneton in Hainaut. Photo by Nasanbuyn, Wikimedia commons.