The website of the New Zealand Stock Exchange slowed to a crawl on a Tuesday afternoon in August. It was so badly throttled that the exchange couldn’t post market announcements, as required by financial regulators. So with an hour left for trading, management shut the entire operation down.
It didn’t take long to figure out what happened. The website had been overwhelmed by a tsunami of offshore digital traffic. An email from the perpetrators made clear that it was a malicious attack.
NZX Ltd, which operates the exchange, restored connectivity ahead of the next trading day. But the attacks resumed once the market opened, forcing more trading suspensions over the next few days.