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The fight against cyberattack on New Zealand’s NZX stock market will now involve security agencies from other Five Eyes countries.
Professor Dave Parry from AUT’s Department of Computer Science said: “With GCSB involved, it will almost certainly involve other international agencies as well, which is the way to close this.”
Normal trading in stocks and bonds was disrupted between Tuesday and Friday as a result of a sustained cyber attack, and cybercriminals are believed to have requested a ransom from NZX.
On Friday, Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced that the GCSB, which is a government agency with duties that include protecting New Zealand’s national security from cyber threats, began working with NZX to stop the attack.
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Cyberattacks on vital government and civilian institutions were of great concern to Five Eyes intelligence partners from New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, Parry said.
Ricky Wilson / Stuff
A massive and sustained cyber attack on the NZX disrupted operations on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
“The Five Eyes will be very interested to see if there is any long-term threat from the groups involved, whether they are criminal gangs or whether it includes the government or pseudo-government groups,” he said.
Australia accused China of being involved in a growing cybercrime against Australian institutions earlier this year and began a massive investment in cybersecurity capacity.
Andrew Little, Minister Responsible for GCSB, said: “Around the world, other stock exchanges could be in situations like this. It is natural for information to be shared. “
Parry had sympathy for NZX, which he believed was far more susceptible to distributed denial of service (known as DDoS) attacks than other critical service providers, such as utility providers, through no fault of his own.
The US-owned technology news site ZDnet has reported that the cybercrime group targeting NZX offline has been targeting various financial providers around the world, demanding payment in bitcoin to cancel their attacks.
ZDnet said the attackers had names that included “Armada Collective” and “Fancy Bear” and that they generally emailed “huge ransom demands” to victims.
Parry said that the people behind the attack may have targeted NZX calculating that the company and New Zealand authorities would respond more slowly and less effectively than if it had targeted a stock exchange in the United States or the United Kingdom, although Other targets of offenders are reported. have included money transfer services PayPal and Worldpay and YesBank India, ZDnet said, citing a source.
“The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia … most of the NATO countries would have extremely close relations with the stock exchanges,” Parry said.
“If NZX had had the resources of the US government and the NSA behind it, it would have been more difficult,” he said.
Little described the cyber attack on the NXZ as a “wake-up call” for organizations to ensure that they have safeguards in place against cyber attacks.
But, he said: “The reality is that our telecommunications networks are privately owned. The GCSB has powers under telecom interception, the capacity and legislation to help, but ultimately they are the owners of those networks, working with their customers to take action. “
GCSB could provide advice, Little said.
But, he said: “You cannot make the investment decisions of the private owners, the Sparks, the Vodafones, as well as each other and their clients.”
Parry hoped that the attack on the NZX would lead to a behind-the-scenes review in the government on whether New Zealand’s defenses against cyber attacks needed to be improved.
Parry hoped that many of the details of the attack would remain secret forever, although he hoped it would be shared with other trusted foreign security agencies.
NZX and Spark would work through the weekend to prepare defenses to counter the continued attacks, he said, but he would not be surprised to see the attacks continue to disrupt their operations next week.
NZX was quiet about the work in progress to defeat the cyber attack, or whether it was confident that trading in stocks and bonds would not be disrupted again when markets open on Monday.
NZX CEO Mark Peterson issued a statement late Friday assuring the public that the stock exchange systems had not been breached.
RNZ
The government has brought in the heavy hitters to investigate the attacks on the NZX. The stock market has been the victim of attacks for four days in a row.
“This is a systems connectivity problem, not a data or communications integrity problem,” Peterson said.
The NZX was working with its Internet provider, Spark, along with GCSB and other national and international cybersecurity experts.
“As this is an ongoing response, NZX will not provide details on the nature of the attacks or countermeasures. We are communicating directly with our stakeholders and market participants and will continue to update them as needed. “
The attack on NZX had caused some disruption to KiwiSaver providers, but no KiwiSaver money was at risk, the fund managers said.
