The Dutch government has commenced probe to investigate the role of Iran in recent hacking Dutch state websites after digital certificates were stolen.
The Dutch Interior Ministry in a statement said that it cannot guarantee the security of its own websites, days after the private company it uses to authenticate them, DigiNotar, admitted it was hacked.
An official also said the government was taking over the company’s operations.
The Dutch public broadcaster NOS published a list of fifty domains for which forged certificates were issued.
Already, Google and other major Web browser providers have begun rejecting security certificates issued by DigiNotar.
DigiNotar, a subsidiary of VASCO Data Security International, suffered a cyber attack in mid-July and security certificates were stolen for a number of domains, in which hackers produced hundreds of forged certificates for third-party domains.
Relations between Iran and the Netherlands deteriorated early this year when a Dutch-Iranian woman was hanged in Iran in January and buried without her relatives being present. She had been arrested after taking part in demonstrations and accused of drug smuggling .
In April, the Iranian embassy in the Hague criticized the Dutch government after an Iranian asylum seeker who was being extradited set himself on fire in Amsterdam and died.
