A tech expert has labelled Wednesday’s cyber attack on multiple New Zealand businesses and banks as nothing more than a “little chaos” by “kids in the background”.
Websites for some government agencies such as MetService and banks like ANZ and KiwiBank went offline for a time on Wednesday after hackers had already caused outages last Friday when they hit infrastructure provider Vocus.
Telecommunications Forum CEO Paul Brislen told Breakfast on Thursday the DDoS [distributed denial-of-service] attacks were about stopping legitimate customers from being to access services.
“It’s kind of the electronic equivalent of someone running up to your door, knocking on the door and then running away,” Brislen explained.
“So by the time you get up out of your chair, get over and open the door and find there’s nobody there, you go back, sit back down and carry on with what you’re doing – and then they do it again, and they do it millions and millions of times a second.
“It means that the systems at the bank or MetService are tied up answering these guys so nobody legitimate can get into the business.
“It’s a blunt, brutal attack but it can cause chaos.”
Brislen said the attack was more about the hacker than what was hacked.
“They’re just causing trouble to prove they can do it,” he said.
“It’s just people causing chaos… and [it's about] reputation. ‘We took down ANZ for a day, come play with us’.
“It’s all those kids in the background running around doing things and claiming credit for stuff.”
Brislen also reassured those attempting to access bank accounts during the attack wouldn’t have had any personal details such as logins taken either.
“They haven’t got through the front door, they’re just knocking.”
SHARE ME