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The director of the New Zealand Telecommunications Users Association says attacks on the NZX are highly unusual and serve as a good reminder for companies to ensure their defenses are up.
Photo: Supplied / NZX
The stock market suffered trade shutdowns last week and an outage yesterday for the fifth day after denial-of-service attacks took its website offline.
The NZX markets opened today at 10 a.m. M. And operations started as usual during the morning with the NZX website running without interruption.
The minister who oversees the country’s spy agencies, Andrew Little, said the NZX received warning messages of the attacks.
The Executive Director of the Telecommunications Users Association (TUANZ), Craig Young, said the attack is embarrassing for NZX.
“Most companies are prepared for these types of attacks and it seems, in this very unusual case, that the attackers have found a vulnerability in the NZX site and therefore continue to have another crack every day.”
“This is a financial institution that we trust and they have high-profile providers. It is quite unusual for these types of attacks to occur over several days.
“Usually what happens is they try, get rejected, and move on. They get bored very quickly and look for another target. In this case, they have found a vulnerability that they keep trying.”
Young said it is a good reminder for New Zealand that while we believe we are isolated and far from the rest of the world, we are only microseconds in line.
“These types of cybercriminals will work anywhere in the world where they see a vulnerability, whether in New Zealand or elsewhere.”
He said New Zealand is seen as a bit of an easy target and can be used to launch attacks.
“It’s a scary thought, but it’s not really New Zealand people who are doing it, they are using our systems and going through our networks to get to those places.”
Companies should pay attention to what happened to the NZX and use it as a timely reminder to examine their own defenses, Young said.
Unlike many other countries, including the UK and Australia, New Zealand does not have mandatory reporting of cyberattacks, so we often don’t know when corporations are affected.
“The unusual thing about this is that it is very public and we are seeing the impacts of these attacks,” Young said.
Lech Janczewski, a data security expert at the University of Auckland, said New Zealand could be a target due to recent coverage of our Covid-19 response that has put us in the limelight.
“Why not try some software attacks against this country and announce to the world that we are so good at attacks so they can ask for some money?”
Janczewski said that cybercriminals can use the attack as leverage for their next target to demand ransom.
