It seems like New Zealand is becoming a new cyberthreat landscape with regular security incidents. Months after a cyberattack on the New Zealand reserve bank, attackers reportedly targeted several banks, financial institutions, and postal services in the country.
CERT NZ is aware of a DDoS attack targeting a number of New Zealand organisations. We are monitoring the situation and are working with affected parties where we can.
— CERT NZ (@CERTNZ) September 7, 2021
New Zealand’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) stated that it identified a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that temporarily affected the operations of several organizations in the country. In DDoS attacks, threat actors make a targeted system or service unavailable to its users by flooding their systems with unwanted incoming traffic from different sources.
While the criminals behind the attack are unknown, the agency stated that it is investigating the incident and working with affected parties to explore more details.
One Attack, Multiple Victims
The DDoS attack has affected multiple organizations in New Zealand, including Australia and New Zealand banking group (ANZ), New Zealand Post (NZ Post), and Kiwibank.
Also Read: New Zealand’s Reserve Bank Data System Hacked; Critical Data at Risk
ANZ has apologized its customers for the service outage. “We are experiencing an outage with our Internet Banking and goMoney app at the moment, we’re really sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause! Our tech teams are working hard to get things fixed asap,” ANZ said.
Kia ora everyone
We’re experiencing an outage with our Internet Banking and goMoney app at the moment, we’re really sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause!
Our tech teams 🛠 are working hard to get things fixed asap!— ANZ New Zealand (@ANZ_NZ) September 7, 2021
Several other victim organizations took to social media to apologize to its customers and provide update on the security incident.
We are currently experiencing intermittent disruptions with our website and our team are working hard to fix it as quickly as possible. We are otherwise operating normally, but our Customer Care team are experiencing high volumes so please only contact us if it is urgent. pic.twitter.com/UiJOFMmuZ1
— NZ Post (@nzpost) September 8, 2021
“Apologies for the inconvenience while we work to fix intermittent access to our App, Internet Banking, Phone Banking, and Website,” Kiwibank said in a post.
Apologies for the inconvenience while we work to fix intermittent access to our App, Internet Banking, Phone Banking, and Website. Our Contact Centre is experiencing high call volumes. Please consider this if calling. Thanks again for your patience while we work through this. 💚
— Kiwibank (@KiwibankNZ) September 7, 2021
DDoS Attacks Rise in New Zealand
This is not the first time organizations in New Zealand have sustained a DDoS attack. Recently, New Zealand stock exchange NZX Ltd. went offline for three consecutive days after a DDoS attack impacted its network connectivity systems, including NZX websites and the markets announcement platform. Read More Here…
