A DDoS attack caused massive internet outages in NZ

Updated on: March 14, 2022 10:53 AM

Vilius Petkauskas
Deputy Editor

New Zealand's third-largest internet service provider (ISP), Vocus, was hit by a DDoS attack, which prompted outages all over the country.

According to Reuters, the company said its systems blocked a denial of service (DDoS) attack on one user but, in doing so, caused some Vocus customers in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch to suffer outages.

"We are working closely with the vendor of this platform to understand why this occurred," Reuters reported a company spokesperson saying. The claims to have solved the issue in 30 minutes.

Local media outlets report that the attack cut off around 15% of the country's broadband customers from the internet at one point.

Vocus implemented pre existing security measures to mitigate the attack. However, not everything went according to plan.

CEO of the company, Mark Callander, explained to local media that usually stopping an attack involves filtering out traffic bombarding the victim.

However, in today's case, companies' security measures affected Vocus' service to its other customers, causing outages all over the country.

The levels of DDoS attacks during 2021 seem to be beating even the record highs seen in the previous 12 months. Threat actors launched approximately 2.9 million DDoS attacks in the first quarter of 2021, a 31% increase from the same time in 2020.