SIMON O'CONNOR/STUFF/Stuff
GCSB Minister Andrew Little says making it illegal to pay cyber criminals is a policy that could be considered, but he doesn’t believe that would be a panacea.
GCSB Minister Andrew Little says the only clue the country’s spy agency has to go on tracking down the source of recent cyber attacks on New Zealand is emails sent to some victims ahead of the assault.
NZX had received an email that put it “on notice” shortly before it was targeted by a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack that took down its website for six days, he said.
It is understood that the email sought a large ransom in Bitcoin.
Attackers have also interrupted the online services of Westpac and MetService and targeted Stuff and RNZ, though it is not known if all those attacks were on the same scale or by the same group.
READ MORE:* MetService website crashes again following DDoS cyberattack* Victim-blaming plays into DDOS attackers' hands* Govt spy agency has 'no clues' on source of cyberattacks on NZX* examining extortion email ahead attack stuff
