New Zealand central bank hit by a cyber attack

A cyber attack hit the New Zealand central bank, sensitive information has been potentially accessed by the intruders

The New Zealand central bank announced today that a cyber attack hit its infrastructure. According to the Government organization, one of its data systems has been breached by an unidentified hacker, commercially and personally sensitive information might have been accessed by the attackers.

“A third party file sharing service used by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to share and store sensitive information had been illegally accessed, the Wellington-based bank said in a statement.” reported the NBCNews.

According to Governor Adrian Orr the attack did not impact the bank’s core operations, anyway, it added that the security breach has been contained. In response to the incident, the affected system had been taken offline.

National authorities are investigating the incident with the help of cybersecurity experts.

“We are working closely with domestic and international cybersecurity experts and other relevant authorities as part of our investigation and response to this malicious attack,” Orr said.

“The nature and extent of information that has been potentially accessed is still being determined, but it may include some commercially and personally sensitive information.”

“It will take time to understand the full implications of this breach and we are working with system users whose information may have been accessed,”

The New Zealand central bank did not provide details about the attack, it is not clear when it took place and how the attackers have breached its system.

Media pointed out that other organizations in New Zealand were hit by cyber attacks in the past months, including the New Zealand stock exchange (NZX) that was halted 2 days in August after a DDoS attack from abroad.

According to the latest report published by government agency CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team), cyber attacks in the country had increased 33% year-on-year.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, New Zealand central bank)

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