There are major concerns tonight New Zealand has been targeted by Russian state-sponsored hackers.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is waiting on advice from government security experts, after British and American intelligence agencies accused Russia of a global cyber attack.
"As I've indicated in the past, we now have a level of sophistication that's not necessarily people to people, but cyber-based attacks," Ms Ardern said.
Though the Prime Minister is not certain the New Zealand was the specific target of these attacks.
"As I've also indicated in the past, New Zealand is not immune to that, we are not always the target, but we are often caught up in the same cyber attacks that we find our international partners are," Ms Ardern said.
The FBI says it is confident Russian hackers are involved in attempts to infiltrate internet routers, the basic equipment found in homes, businesses and government agencies around the world.
The American, British and Australian governments accusing Russian hackers of being behind the cyber war last year.
They believe Russian state actors targeted big businesses and essential infrastructure like power grids and water mains.
"Potentially 400 companies were targeted but we don't believe there was any exploitation of significance," Australia Defence Minister Marise Payne said.
Jacinda Ardern has however said such concerns are not entirely new.
"We have in the past attributed some of the cyber attacks we've seen, NotPetya in December we attributed directly to Russia, so that is not new,” Ms Ardern said.
"I've seen some recent statements made out of the US and UK and am awaiting advice from the GCSB on that, but as I said, we have attributed cyber attacks to Russia in the past and it's highly likely the issues we've seen in New Zealand could be attributed in that way in the future."
Government Communications Security Bureau director general Andrew Hampton issued an alert to national cyber security centre customers
It said there were nearly 400 threats last year, 122 of those connected to foreign intelligence agencies, including Russian state actors and that blaming cyber incidents on particular countries is not taken lightly.
“The very basis of these cyber attacks is the ability to operate them remotely from any part of the world and that's makes them so challenging in this environment, in that we are seeing an increase in that kind of activity,” Ms Ardern said.
That's as concern grows about Russian retaliation for action taken in Syria.
“It could certainly be a prepositioning manoeuvre for an attack on critical infrastructure,” Fergus Hansen of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said.
Russia says the allegations are unsubstantiated.
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