New Zealand stock exchange under constant cyber attacks

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ANKARA (AA) – New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) is under constant cyber attacks reportedly from abroad.

After four days of shutdown, the NZX resumed services on Friday after the government intervened with the help of the country’s security spy wing, local news website Stuff.com reported.

The NZX 50 index rebounded gaining 40 points Friday to close at 12,093 points -- 14 points short of its previous all-time high of 12,107 last February.

Trading was briefly disrupted twice as cyber-attacks continued.

The NZX in a statement to daily New Zealand Herald said: “NZX is continuing to work with its network provider [Spark] to investigate the source of the issue, following volumetric DDoS [distributed denial of service] attacks from offshore on 25 and 26 August.”

The NZX is pegged at 204 billion New Zealand dollars ($135 billion).

The authorities have called in Government Communications Security Bureau -- the spy agency -- and national cybersecurity center which are assisting the NZX, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said.

Technology news site ZDnet – based in US – has claimed the group behind the cyber-attack on the NZX has been attacking several financial providers around the world. The demand of the group is payment in Bitcoin to call off its attacks.