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New Zealand’s top-tier security apparatus has come together to defend against ongoing cyber attacks.
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 the government and is the main committee of the National Security System, which comes into play during crises that threaten the security, sovereignty or economy of New Zealand. 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 banks and Metservice.
Ricky Wilson / Stuff
The NZX has been subject to a number of cyber attacks in the last week.
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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, which was receiving daily reports on the attacks, said NZX had been stable on Tuesday.
TSB Bank had reported another incident, which alerted authorities to an interruption in its services, 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 this time, there is a risk. But equally, many organizations have implemented the 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 Force 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 necessary … They were satisfied that everything that needed to be in place was in place,” he said Little.
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.
An earlier version of this story said that the GSCB had been attacked, this was incorrect. The GSCB has since clarified that it was not the subject of a DDoS attack on Tuesday.
