The exchange said stock trading had almost stopped 16.00 local time (12 o’clock ET) on Tuesday after experiencing a widespread attack of service (DDoS) from outside the country. This was followed by further attacks on Wednesday and Thursday, which prevented trading in debt and equity markets most of the day. The derivatives market also closed at 4 p.m. on Thursday.
The motive for the attack on the New Zealand Stock Exchange remains unclear, and NZX declined to comment on whether the attackers demanded a ransom.
“We do not respond publicly to our specific cyber security arrangements or how we respond to specific threats,” it said. “NZX is continuing with its network provider to investigate the source of the problem.”
But this type of attack is becoming much more frequent as cybercriminals capitalize on the proliferation of computer services that are accessible
” One reason why DDoS attacks are so cheap is that more and more people offering DDoS for rent services are using the scale and bandwidth of public clouds, ‘said Juta Gurinaviciute, chief technology officer at NordVPN Teams, the cloud-based network provider.
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