The New Zealand Stock Exchange went offline for two consecutive days due to a cyber attack, according to the BBC.
The NZH reported that it was attacked by DDoS (distributed denial of service) from abroad on Tuesday. According to the stock exchange, its connectivity was affected and therefore it was decided to stop trading in the financial markets shortly before 16.00 (local time). Trading stopped for a second time on Wednesday, but resumed before the end of the day.
A DDoS attack is a relatively simple form of cyber attack, where many computers try to connect to an online service at the same time, to the point that it can not cope.
Some traders may have encountered problems in their activities, however this does not mean that financial or personal data have been breached.
According to NZX, the attack came from abroad, through its network service provider. The second attack stopped activities for a remarkable three hours. However, everything was back online by the end of the day.
New Zealand-based cybersecurity organization CertNZ issued a warning in November for emails being send to financial companies threatening DDoS attacks unless they paid a ransom. The emails allegedly came from a Russian hacker group known as Fancy Bear, but CertNZ said the threats had not materialized at the time, other than a 30-minute intimidating attack.
I have also posted this article on my Uptrennd account:
Wow. This is huge. How can this have happened? It must have been with malware and phising as in Twitter.