Trading returns to New Zealand’s bourse following cyber attacks
‘We are experiencing connectivity issues, which appear similar to those caused by offshore attacks’
NEW ZEALAND’S stock exchange began trading again yesterday following four straight days of disruption.
The country’s bourse has been hobbled by two “offshore” cyber attacks, with its national security systems deployed to act as a support mechanism.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Wellington’s NZX was hit by a distributed denial of service – known as a DDOS – attack. These attacks typically try to overwhelm a company’s servers by routing high levels of traffic through it, forcing it to crash. On its return to trading, the $135bn (£100bn) stock exchange was also hit by connectivity issues that disrupted early activity.
“We are currently experiencing connectivity issues, which appear similar to those caused by severe DDOS attacks from offshore this week,” NZX said.
Grant Robertson, the New Zealand finance minister, said the government had called in both the Communications Security Bureau and the national cyber crime fighting agency to assist the exchange.
New Zealand’s cash markets, as well as its debt and derivatives markets and its Fonterra Shareholders Market, were all disrupted by the attacks. “Four days in a row is becoming frustrating and quite disruptive,” said Jeremy Sullivan, an investment adviser at brokerage Hamilton Hindin Greene in Christchurch.
Mr Sullivan said that activity remained low but that institutional deals were still able to process negotiated trades through the market. Tech site Zdnet reported that the New Zealand stock exchange was one of a range of recent victims of DDOS attacks by criminal groups that brand themselves as Armada Collective and Fancy Bear.
The origin of the attackers is not yet known, but they appear to be using monikers associated with several infamous hacking collectives, according to security researchers Akamai.
Fancy Bear is allegedly linked to the Russian state and most notoriously was responsible for hacking the Democratic Party ahead of the 2016 US elections.