On Tuesday (19th September), The International Criminal Court (ICC) said its computer systems had been hacked
The ICC said it had detected unusual activity on its computer network at the end of last week.
In a short statement, a spokesperson for the ICC said “Immediate measures were adopted to respond to this cybersecurity incident and to mitigate its impact,“
Established in 2002, the ICC is the permanent war crimes tribunal in the Dutch city of The Hague.
Its role is to try war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prosecutors at the court are currently conducting 17 investigations into situations in Ukraine, Uganda, Venezuela, Afghanistan and the Philippines, among others.
In March, the court made global headlines when it issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on suspicion of illegally deporting children from Ukraine.
The court has not disclosed what part of its systems have been accessed, but highly sensitive documents at the ICC could include anything from criminal evidence to names of protected witnesses.
The court said in its statement that it was continuing to “analyse and mitigate the impact of this incident” with the assistance of the Dutch government.
Although at this time, it is not possible to attribute the attack to any particular threat actor, the Dutch intelligence agency (AIVD) said in its 2022 annual report that the ICC was “of interest to Russia because it is investigating possible Russian war crimes in Georgia and Ukraine“. In June 2022, the AIVD disclosed it had found a Russian military agent posing as a Brazilian in an attempt to infiltrate the court.
