New Zealand’s central bank was victim of a computer hacking attack, but further details remain under investigation. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand, which had stored data on a third-party file-sharing server, stated that sensitive personal and commercial information was accessed by an unknown individual in one of their data systems.
According to Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr, the Bank is working with cybersecurity professionals locally and internationally to investigate this matter. The Bank’s central functions remain intact, and the breach has been contained, although the Bank continues to work with the people whose data has been accessed.
The bank has yet to discover the time, location, or individual(s) behind the attack. Various other groups in the country have been hit by IT-based issues as well; last August, servers for NZX were disrupted and rendered non-operational for four days due to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
Auckland University computer science professor Dave Perry speculated during an appearance on Radio New Zealand that another government may well be responsible for the attack on the Bank. Governments, he reasoned, are less likely to pay for a system hijack attempt when compared to similar acts committed independently by individual criminals.
The Reserve Bank itself has not commented on whether the attack was likely to have originated from a single person or from another government. Adrian Orr has stated that the investigation will be updated through the Reserve Bank Data Breach Response page and email service, as more information can be made public.