$6m lost to cyber attacks amid Covid

The Government’s Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert NZ) fielded a record 2610 reports of cyber attacks in the September quarter, which included the second lockdown for Aucklanders.

It continued a trend of escalating online fraud, phishing and ransomware attacks during the pandemic.

Reported financial loss for the three months to September 30 jumped to $6.4 million from $3.8m in the year-ago quarter — but Cert NZ says a lot of offending is likely going unreported, either because victims are too sheepish or because they are simply not aware of the existence of the relatively new cyber agency.

An old favourite returned during the quarter — DDOS, or distributed denial of service attacks — such as the one that hit the NZX in August.

And Cert NZ has also seen the emergence of a new scam tailored to the pandemic remote-working boom: emails purporting to be Zoom meeting invites, but containing links to malicious software that could take over your computer.

“We’ve seen a significant rise in reports of unauthorised access to organisations’ networks within the last six months as more . . . people work remotely,” Cert NZ response manager Nadia Youse fsaid.