New Zealand joins international condemnation of NotPetya cyber-attack

The Director-General of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) Andrew Hampton has today added New Zealand’s voice to international condemnation of the NotPetya cyber-attack.

NotPetya caused wide spread damage and disruption to computer systems around the world in June 2017.

Mr Hampton says the GCSB’s international partners have today attributed the NotPetya cyber-attack to the Russian Government.

“While NotPetya masqueraded as a criminal ransomware campaign, its real purpose was to damage and disrupt systems,” Mr Hampton said.

“Its primary targets were Ukrainian financial, energy and government sectors. However, NotPetya’s indiscriminate design caused it to spread around the world affecting these sectors world-wide.

“While there were no reports of NotPetya having a direct impact in New Zealand, it caused disruption to some organisations while they updated systems to protect themselves from it.

“This reinforces that New Zealand is not immune from this type of threat. In a globally connected world our relative geographic isolation offers no protection from cyber threats.

“We support the actions of our cyber security partners in calling out this sort of reckless and malicious cyber activity.”

In the 12 months from June 2016 to June 2017 nearly a third (122) of the 396 serious incidents recorded by the GCSB’s National Cyber Security Centre involved indicators that have previously been linked to state-sponsored actors.

A copy of the 2016-17 Unclassified Cyber Threat Report can be accessed here.

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