New Zealand bourse operator NZX hit by probable second cyber attack

Trading on New Zealand’s stock exchange was halted on Wednesday after a likely second cyber attack, bourse operator NZX Ltd said.

NZX was working with its network service provider to fix further connectivity issues which appeared similar to Tuesday’s breakdown caused by a cyber attack, it said in a statement.

Trading in its cash markets were suspended at 2324 GMT and its website remained crashed.

Wednesday’s disruption follows a halt in its cash markets Tuesday evening after a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack impacted network connectivity. The attack was from offshore, the company said.

DDoS attacks are among the most common on the internet and are designed to overwhelm websites and internet servers through heightened traffic, until they can no longer cope with the scale of data requested.