The recent victim of a cybersecurity incident with a potentially damaging impact is New Zealand’s central bank. Specifically, the New Zealand central bank has confirmed a cyber attack that they suspect to have resulted in a data breach.
New Zealand Bank Cyber Attack
Reportedly, New Zealand’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, has suffered a cyber attack.
As reported by NBC News, Governor Adrian Orr has admitted that the bank faced an indirect security breach. The attackers potentially accessed a third-party file-sharing service that the bank used for storing and sharing data.
The security incident didn’t affect the bank’s core operations. However, the bank suspects that the attackers might have accessed sensitive data.
As per Orr’s statement,
The nature and extent of information that has been potentially accessed is still being determined, but it may include some commercially and personally sensitive information…
It will take time to understand the full implications of this breach and we are working with system users whose information may have been accessed.
Investigations Underway
While the bank has confirmed the cyber attack and potential data breach, they have assured to have contained the attack.
Moreover, they also assured that the bank is continuing with the investigations of the matter.
We are working closely with domestic and international cybersecurity experts and other relevant authorities as part of our investigation and response to this malicious attack.
However, until the investigations continue, the bank has taken the affected system offline.
For now, no other details are available. Nor did the Governor or any other official sources revealed any timelines of the incident, the extent of information impacted during the incident, or the exact name of the third-party service.
Also, it remains unclear whether the bank had suffered a typical data breach or a ransomware attack.
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