Cyber attack: Kiwibank and MetService still experiencing problems

Kiwibank customers continue to experience problems with the bank’s online services.

Customers this morning took to Facebook to express frustration at the situation, which lasted almost a week.

“All I wanted to do is go get some chicken & chips from Pak’nSave and I bloody can’t because I can’t transfer my money to get it,” one customer complained on Facebook.

The customer went on to urge the bank to sort out the issue because it was making it difficult to plan ahead of transferring money.

A Facebook message from Kiwibank this morning confirmed that there were still problems with the service.

“We are experiencing intermittent issues with access to internet banking, our app, and phone banking which we are working urgently to fix,” a Kiwibank spokesperson said today.

“There are no current issues with payments, ATMs or cards. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this is causing our customers and will continue to post updates via our social channels.”

A cyber attack on 8 September knocked a number of major organisation’s websites.

Kiwibank, ANZ, NZ Post and MetService. NZ Police all acknowledged that their sites were slow at times.

All the sites eventually came back online, but they continued to drop out in the days that followed.

Those issues also continued today for MetService, with users reporting issues with the service again today.

CERT NZ posted a statement last week attributing the outages to a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack.

Experts have told the Herald that the attacks could be a result of New Zealand’s lockdown conditions that have been well reported around the world.

“It would seem that because our situation in level 4 is as well known throughout the world, and that we are relying more on our digital services, particularly with banking, it makes sense for cyber-criminals to target those services – presumably believe that they could demand a higher ransom or that a ransom might be more forthcoming,” AUT senior lecturer in software engineering Ken Johnson told the Herald.

Other experts have also suggested that historical under-investment in cyber security has made New Zealand an easier target for hackers.

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