KEY POINTS:
New Zealand internet service providers have been hit by a hacker, defacing customers' homepages with Turkish script.
The hacker, operating under the name Iskorpitx, was responsible for more than 38,000 websites being replaced with the Turkish flag in 2006.
Internet service provider ihug has confirmed 90 of its customers have been victims of the hacker.
It is understood that several other internet service providers have also been affected by the Turkey-based hacker.
"They have attacked a server in the US and a company we bought last year have some legacy customers that are still being hosted on that server, so some of those customers have been affected," said ihug spokesperson Annabel Gould.
Ihug are advising customers to re-upload their webpage as a "quick-fix" while the company moves affected websites to its own server.
Reports said some people were having to rebuild their websites at a cost of thousands of dollars.
Early last year ihug purchased Quik.co.nz, a New Zealand franchise of United States-based internet service provider Quik.com.
The problem has affected customers of Quik.co.nz who had their websites hosted on the US servers of Quik.com as part of a basic website service the New Zealand company discontinued selling a long time ago, said Gould.
The problem does not affect ihug customers hosted on the company's own servers.
Gillian Richardson, administration manager at Automotive Security Systems, said their company website - caralarm.co.nz - is one of those affected by the hacker.
"It's been down since Monday and our phones have just stopped and not only have we lost the business, but that work's going to our competitors," said Ms Richardson.
"They [ihug] just keep saying 'we're looking into it, you're in a priority list, we'll do what we can now it's been reported'. We can't reload - we don't have any copies of it."
She said normally they would be booked out four days ahead. This week they have had two afternoons where the technicians have sat around doing nothing.
"It's a substantial loss for us really," she said.
Ms Richard said that 80 per cent of calls to the company mention visiting the website to get company details or sales specials.
She said they won't know what the true impact of the loss of business is until they look at their figures at the end of the month, but she estimates they have lost a third of their business.
Internet service provider Splurf has offered to help any businesses affected by the hacker attacks to get back online free of charge.
