New Zealand stock exchange hacked by cyber-attack

New Zealand’s stock exchange went offline for two days in a row due to a cyber-attack. 

 According to the international news agency, NZX said that it had first targeted by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack from abroad, on Tuesday.

The stock exchange mentioned that the attack had “impacted NZX network connectivity”. It decided to stop trading in cash markets just ahead of 16:00 local time.

NZX said the attack had come “from offshore via its network service provider”.

The stock has halted trading for the second time, on Wednesday, but was then back up and running before the end of the day.

Trading was stopped after the second attack from 11:24 to 15:00 local time, the exchange said.

However, the stock exchange was up at the close of business, near its all-time high despite the attack. 

BBC reported that A DDoS attack is a relatively simple type of cyber-attack, in which a large array of computers all try to connect to an online service at once, overwhelming its capacity.

They often access the devices comprised by malware the owners do not know are part of the attack. 

Traders may have faced issues while doing business. However, personal or financial data was not accessed.