The ANZ and several institutions in New Zealand have been hit by a DDoS cyber attack

The ANZ bank is among range of institutions, including the New Zealand Post Office, hit by what appears to be a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on Wednesday morning.

https://twitter.com/ANZ_NZ/status/1435362520630538243

New Zealand’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said it was aware of a DDoS attack, is monitoring the situation and working with affected parties where it can.

CERT NZ is aware of a DDoS attack targeting a number of New Zealand organisations. We are monitoring the situation and are working with affected parties where we can.

— CERT NZ (@CERTNZ) September 7, 2021

Kiwibank, which is part-owned by NZ Post, has also experienced disruptions to service today.

https://twitter.com/KiwibankNZ/status/1435383844752936960

NZ Post has told customers via Twitter that it too is experiencing intermittent disruptions on its website and is working to fix it.

We are currently experiencing intermittent disruptions with our website and our team are working hard to fix it as quickly as possible. We are otherwise operating normally, but our Customer Care team are experiencing high volumes so please only contact us if it is urgent. pic.twitter.com/UiJOFMmuZ1

— NZ Post (@nzpost) September 8, 2021

Some government departments, including primary industries, and the police are also reporting interruptions to their services.

The MetService says it is having issues too.

An issue is currently affecting https://t.co/KjoElHh2uF and our apps. Traffic has been diverted to our backup site https://t.co/Ux3O5GOkpB which contains all safety critical weather information for NZ. Thank you for your patience as we work to get these service back online. ^Josh

— MetService (@MetService) September 7, 2021

DDoS attacks hit servers with increased incoming connection requests that overload the servers and effectively block legitimate requests.

Around lunchtime last Friday, Kiwi internet provider Vocus NZ, which owns the Orcon, Slingshot and Stuff Fibre brands, crashed following a cyberattack on a customer that impacted on services and the company sought to respond to the hack. The issue also disrupted Sky TV, a Vocus NZ client.