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New Zealand’s top-level security apparatus has come together to defend itself against ongoing cyber attacks, which have now hit the country’s security agencies.
Government officials that make up the ODESC (Officials Committee for the Coordination of Internal and External Security) met on Friday to discuss the cyberattacks, which last week crashed the website of the NZX stock exchange and forced it to suspend its operations. operations at times.
ODESC is chaired by executive directors of government and is the main committee of the National Security System, which comes into play during crises that threaten New Zealand’s security, sovereignty or economy. The committee previously stood up to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic and met in the hours after the terrorist attack on March 15, 2019.
Distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattacks, launched from abroad, have since spread to New Zealand’s security agencies, including the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).
Ricky Wilson / Stuff
The NZX has been subject to a number of cyber attacks in the last week.
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The GCSB and New Zealand Intelligence Community websites were briefly offline Tuesday afternoon when Stuff tried to access them.
Security Agencies Minister Andrew Little said it was “difficult to know” if the attacks were increasing, but the attacks on the NZX had justified calling the ODESC.
Little, who was receiving daily reports on the attacks, said that NZX had been stable on Tuesday, however the GCSB had notified him that it had been the target.
TSB Bank reported another incident, alerting authorities to a disruption in its services, as well as Kiwibank, on Tuesday. It appears that other banks have been attacked, and media companies Stuff and Radio NZ have also faced attacks.
BRADEN FASTIER / Things
The minister responsible for security agencies, Andrew Little, says that the GCSB is talking with its Five Eyes counterparts about the DDoS attacks taking place around the world.
“The threat level is no higher today than it was in the middle of last week,” Little said.
“The risk is there, and we know internationally that these attacks continue, and although the incidence is reasonably high at the moment, there is a risk. But equally, many organizations have implemented measures to resist an attack.”
Little said that the GCSB was leading the ODESC on this occasion, and the prime minister had asked him to be the minister responsible for the response.
The Department of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet acts as the coordinator of ODESC, and its members usually include the State Services Commission, the Treasury, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Defense Forces and the police.
Also at the table on this occasion were the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and the Department of the Interior, because they have digital communication networks, Little said.
“It’s really about ensuring that whatever effort is required from any part of the government is harnessed and put in place where it is needed … They were satisfied that everything that had to be in place was in place,” he said Little.
The GCSB did not respond to requests for comment.
A DDoS attack blocks a website by intentionally overloading it with more traffic than it can handle.
The identity of the cyber attackers remains unknown, Little said. In some cases, the attackers had demanded a ransom payable in cryptocurrencies Bitcoin.
