New Zealand stock exchange targeted by hacker in fourth day of cyber attacks
New Zealand’s stock exchange, the NZX, has resumed trading, after outages for four consecutive days in the wake of cyber attacks this week.
It’s prompted the government to activate national security systems to support the bourse.
The NZX halted trading for around three hours on Friday, after crashing due to network connectivity issues, marking the fourth day that trading has been hit.
Finance minister Grant Robertson said the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and other state apparatus had been called in to help the stock exchange.
“I can’t go into much more in terms of specific details other than to say that we as a government are treating this very seriously,” Robertson said.
NZX was hit on Tuesday and Wednesday by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, a common way to disrupt a server by overwhelming it with a flood of internet traffic.
The attacks forced NZX to halt trading in its cash markets, disrupting operations in its debt market and derivatives market.
The source of the “offshore” attacks is unknown, but the failure to stop them increased doubts about New Zealand’s security systems, experts said.
The NZX said: “Given that this is an ongoing response, NZX will not be providing detail on the nature of the attacks or counter-measures.
The bourse would not confirm to local media on whether it had received a blackmail demand, or whether the NZX had a policy with regard to paying ransoms