Wellington, New Zealand – New Zealand The central bank said Sunday that one of its data systems was An unknown intruder hacked it Who may have accessed commercially and personally sensitive information.
The Wellington-based bank said in a statement that it had been illegally accessing a third-party file sharing service used by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to share and store sensitive information.
Governor Adrian Orr said the breach was contained. He said that the basic functions of the bank “remain healthy and functional.”
“We are working closely with local and international cybersecurity experts and other relevant authorities as part of our investigation and response to this malicious attack,” Ur said.
Ur added: “The nature and extent of the information that is likely to be accessed is still being determined, but it may include some commercially and personally sensitive information.”
The system is locked and disconnected until the bank completes its initial investigations.
“It will take time to understand the full implications of this violation, and we are working with system users whose information may have been accessed,” Ur said.
The bank refused to respond to questions emailed to obtain further details.
It is not clear when the violation occurred or if there were any indications of the administrator, and in which country the file sharing service is based.
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Several major institutions in New Zealand have been the target of cyber interference in the past year, including the New Zealand Stock Exchange, whose servers were smashed from public display for nearly a week in August.
Dave Barry, a professor of computer science at the University of Auckland, told Radio New Zealand that another government was likely behind the bank data breach.
At the end of the day, Barry said, “if you’re coming from a sort of criminal outlook, then government agencies won’t pay a ransom or anything else, so maybe you’re more interested in coming from one government level to another.”
