View from the top of the High Noon Express on the Turoa Skifield last month. Mt Ruapehu Alpine Lifts had its website targeted by cyber criminals today. Photo / Supplied
View from the top of the High Noon Express on the Turoa Skifield last month. Mt Ruapehu Alpine Lifts had its website targeted by cyber criminals today. Photo / Supplied
Mt Ruapehu has been the latest Kiwi company to be struck by cyber criminals, with its website being crippled this morning.
However, the company states the attack was only short-lived and it was able to get its systems up and running "within a few minutes".
The attack comes just a few hours after the MetService's website went offline, about 7.30am, after a second day of cyber attacks.
The forecaster ominously said it was expecting more. It had since set up a temporary, basic page with weather for the districts.
The hits come after many other Kiwi businesses had been targeted, most notably the NZX which was hit for five days, Westpac, TSB, Stuff and RNZ.
Fonterra told the Herald it successfully repelled a cyber attack last month.
A post on Mt Ruapehu's Facebook page today stated it was hit at 10am as they were about to release carparks, its "bookable parking system was deliberately crashed by an external cyber-attack (DDoS)".
Mt Ruapehu's website was briefly struck in a cyber attack at 10am today. Photo / File
"The good news is this attack ultimately failed as our parking system was back online within a few minutes, however we can see that this did cause some disruption to your booking journey. The cyber security team is following this up with the ISP (Internet Service Provider) of the attacker."
The company apologised for the attack and its next car park release - set for 6pm - would go ahead as planned.
Security company NortonLifeLocks said criminals prepare for a DDoS attack by taking over thousands of computers.
These were often referred to as "zombie computers". They form what is known as a "botnet" or network of bots. These are used to flood targeted websites, servers and networks with more data than they can accommodate.
A volume-based or "volumetric" DDoS attack, which was apparently the variant that hit the NZX, sends massive amounts of traffic to overwhelm a network's bandwidth, NortonLifeLock says.
The company says a DDoS attack has to be repelled at the internet service provider level, which often involves temporarily blocking traffic from certain IP addresses.
