When friends asked him if he was now in porn, Maxim Veys immediately knew what time it was. — © Belga, Kris Van Exel
Kortrijk –
Anyone who surfed to the website of Flemish MP Maxim Veys (Vooruit) from Kortrijk in recent weeks ended up on a straight-up porn site. “I received comments from some friends asking if I had started a porn site,” says Veys.
Just before the elections, Maxim Veys can’t actually laugh at this. “But it’s my own, stupid fault,” he says. “At the beginning of 2023 I forgot to pay my subscription fee for my domain name. That costs about 30 euros per year. And apparently that domain name was bought over and this was able to happen.”
In concrete terms, on the website in question you saw a whole series of links to porn and sex sites that you could click to. “I took a look myself and it was quite gross at times,” says Veys. “I immediately contacted DNS (Domain Name Systems) Belgium, the manager of the domain names, and hired a lawyer. This is how we learned that the new owner has a PO box address in Oslo, Norway.” (Read more below the photo)
“I took a look myself and it was pretty gross,” says Maxim Veys about his hijacked web domain. — © if
“I will keep a closer eye on my domains and social media from now on”
Maxim Veys
Flemish Member of Parliament
Veys thinks it must almost certainly be Russian hackers. “Their email address ended in ‘.RU’.” Veys immediately filed a complaint with the police, but they told him that he should buy back his domain name. “I finally succeeded, the new owners asked for 250 euros and I just paid it. Because my old website with that content is more than harmful to someone in my position. On Friday I took the website offline.”
Zoekrobots
Veys says that this is not a one-off fact. “I was told by the police investigation department, but also through a specialized IT professional from Izegem, that this is a common practice of international hacker networks to make money. Their search engines look for old domain names, buy them up for next to nothing and then pump them full of porn and sex. To smear your reputation or just to make money.”
Veys warns his colleagues. “You actually have to deal with your own social media and internet domains in a professional manner and I haven’t done that for a while,” he says. “Especially with the elections approaching, I advise all my colleagues to be careful. Here it was a mistake on my part and it cost me 250 euros. But I will keep a closer eye on my own domains from now on.”