Soooooo when will the Government acknowledge a State actor has cyber attacked NZ?

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864

Ummmmmmmm.

So.

When will the Government acknowledge a state actor has cyber attacked NZ?

The co-ordinated cyber attack against NZ last week was a test of our 5 Eyes defence system.

The terabytes of service denial thrown at NZ was of a size that makes it highly unlikely to be a criminal gang.

This was a State actor testing the 5 Eyes defence system at where they think is the weakest link in that network.

The GCSB know who the State actor is.

 

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18 COMMENTS

  1. Martyn – answer is;
    Not if it was proven that the Chinese Communist Party who were responsible for the hack (who were reported by others to be the most likely responsible.)
    If proven, then the NZ Government would use this as a “bargaining tool over better Chinese trade” probably.
    Of course we in the Global village have already been severely threatened by the Chinese Communist party through their Government agencies to not interfere with their activities or we will be retaliated and punished.

  2. ‘State security’, the well-worn pretext for denying the public information, no longer applies because the state isn’t secure and the people who pretend to make it secure don’t know how to.

    They can still use ‘neither confirm nor deny’, I suppose. With the world in multiple crises and no one in power having a clue what to do, other than pretend, we are in for one heel of a ride over the next few years.

    There really is nowhere to run to, but residents of Oregon are trying.

    ‘I have never seen anything like this’: Oregon towns emptied and confusion spreads amid fires
    In Molalla and other western towns, fear, uncertainty and disinformation gripped residents as hundreds of thousands in the state evacuate’

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/11/oregon-fires-towns-emptied-molalla

    ‘Scientists have been warning of the growing threat of climate change, and now those projections are a reality’

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/11/the-future-has-arrived-these-explosive-fires-are-our-climate-change-wakeup-call

    Undoubtedly politicians around the world, including those in NZ, will do their best to make matters worse on all fronts except Covid-19. And some politicians will make matters worse on that front too.

  3. Further to my previous comments about how fucked the US is:

    ‘In the US, the monthly budget statement from the US Treasury revealed another huge -US$200 bln deficit in August, taking the twelve month total to a new record high of just on -$3 tln. Given that the annual rate of GDP is now just under nominal $19.5 tln, that is a Federal deficit of -15.4% of GDP, a staggering level. And that takes the total of US debt held by the public (ie: excluding interagency debt) to over US$20.8 tln. So the annual new deficit added almost 17% to that load in one year. And the US Administration not only did nothing to deal with this load, it actually made it worse. Even at tiny interest rates, the interest cost load amounts to $537 bln per year in 2020. If rates ever rise, this cost will be toxic, and a rise to an average interest rate of 3% will consume more of their tax revenues than their Defense Department, and nearly half of their enormous DHHS (welfare) budget.

    American core inflation rose a bit more than expected in August, now up +1.7% in a year. Not included in that core inflation reading is food that was up +4.1% and petrol that was down almost -17%. But included are two items in demand in a pandemic and recession; medical care is up +5.3% and used cars are up +4.0%. So it is more expensive to buy a car to look fo a job, but cheaper to drive around in the search. Don’t get sick, however.’

    https://www.interest.co.nz/news/107012/us-public-debt-prospects-toxic-us-inflation-rises-canadas-household-debt-falls-chinas

    So, when NZ aligns itself with the US it is tying its own sinking boat to one that is sinking faster.

    Interesting times.

    I wonder if we will make it to the end of the year. America [in its current manifestation] won’t.

      • Not all the world will go down.
        Those institutions basing their wealth management on private bankers will go down and take your money with them.
        Some isolation from the US would provide a small amount of protection.
        We need a State Bank.

  4. Far beit for me to point out that the supposition that “It was China” is not helpful in any way.
    The information service for stock market punters was overloaded by a denial of service attack. This is not a security threat and there are many players who may well have been candidates for this attack.
    The GCSB is saying nothing and if they did could you believe them. Kim Dot Com may have pertinent comments as the most prolific state hacker is the USA.
    False flags are not new.

    • The stock market is a component of the finance sector and therefore very much a genuine “security threat”. A lot of pensions, insurance, as well as private money are invested in NZ stocks. Denying these entities and persons to said market over a prolonged period could potentially cause massive disruption in financing of various key sectors. Add to that overseas investors who no longer see the NZ stock market as “too risky”, could mean a large amount of capital flight from the country, putting our companies at risk (since a lot of their debt is leveraged against the market capitalisation).

      • The actual stock market trading floor was still operational but with held. It was the information service open to buyers and seller that was compromised.
        The level of security between these two would be significant.
        Our stock exchange is not open every day and doesn’t need to be for most punters.
        Ok there was some disruption and clearly their system needs upgrading so there is never a “prolonged period” for big money to be lost by gamblers.
        The share value of a company has little if any effect on its operation.
        Amazon for example ran in the red with low share prices for years.
        Lets not get too far into the worship of the capitalist investor market with wild assumptions.
        Did you notice that Grant Robertson gave the private banks a gift of $31 billion recently. Most of that will end up in the financial sector with less than 9% ever reaching the street according to UK analysis of a similar move there about 2008
        That Govt created debt can be forgiven but a NACT MP has forced an answer our of Robertson to say he won’t
        The financial sector has great power.
        Money is a tool not the reason society to exists.

  5. I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE SOMETHING BEGINNING WITH “S”
    What an interesting little article. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/122633282/national-security-crisis-apparatus-gathered-for-nzx-cyber-attacks-gcsb-targeted

    What raised my interest was that GCSB couldn’t track the hackers.
    Time then for your 5 EYES friends to assist you.
    The PTC Pacific tech centre of at Yokkota airbase will have tracked all data in the Pacific Rim and keeps track of it for 5 + years.
    Foxacid is the NSA code name for servers that host Malware. It will also know of malware marketplaces.
    There is a difference between counterintelligence and cyber intelligence.
    Look for M.Os in cyber Intel
    Locating by GCSB would be impossible if the attacker routed in via the TOR protocols. They need the NSA to have a senior system admin to unlock the routers.
    An attack on our stock market is attack on New Zealand. Imagine if Wall Street was closed down that would be tantamount to war ergo get five eyes to ask the NSA for help.
    The TOR master protocols which I imagine would not be dissimilar to Huawei (who are we) allowing attacks to come from untraceable sources.
    We know that NSA/CIA/Dell IC is a racket with the hiring of subcontractors, and I would be certain that a half competent HumInt CO could find a contractor to become compliant and gain nefarious access to the TOR routers.
    Also.
    The Prism project amd upstream collection
    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/counterfeit-amd-wraith-prism-coolers-are-entering-the-market
    enables the NSA to routinely collect data from Microsoft Yahoo Google Facebook Paltalk YouTube Skype AOL and Apple including all emails photos videos and audio audio chats and all web-browsing content search engine queries and all the data stored on the cloud. The and upstream collection meanwhile is arguably even more invasive as it enables the routine capture of data directly from private sector internet infrastructures.
    So.
    When the government says we are not going to store what is on your emails just the fact that it was sent. It would not take a reasonably competent person long, with all the meta data available, to find out where you were staying with your girlfriend or your boyfriend, how much you spent on flowers which hotel you stayed, what do you use your holidays.
    The best thing I can recommend to you is get yourselves off Facebook and prepare to take your GPS offline. Leave your phone off for long periods.
    To prove a point, go out in the countryside and phone gcsb and tell them your screen has died so could they please tell you where you are as you can’t read your GPS won’t take long before they can tell exactly where you are. Scary eh.
    Oh! What begins with “S”?
    SUCKERS.
    Ross Meurant, B.A. M.P.P. Currently Honorary Consul for an African state and Trustee & MD of absentee Russian owned commercial assets in NZ. Former National MP, and former police inspector in charge of Auckland region C.I.S. & V.I.P. security [aka spies and body guards].

  6. The links, whether Chinese, or more local party-aligned cyber-terrorists, will probably be another tranche of ‘Dirty Politics’ and it will be a case of “quiet dignified outrage”, “really?” , “FFS”, “thank God we weren’t involved in that shit!“, or simply understated, a-la-Scotty-and-Barry’s-dog-on-the-back-of-the-ute, “Bugger!”

    Or simpler, “I knew it would be that lot!”, tut-tutting loudly and making that the reason for voting, or for not voting for that Party colour, or blend or coalition of Party colours.

    Or even simpler – “Sneaky Bathplugs! Bastards!” – election over – better luck in 6 years time, or never again.

    Cyber-terrorism, could be the new Cossacks, new Iwi-Kiwi, new Eminem-esque “advert” in polarising New Zealanders

    If it feels like dogshit, and smells like dogshit, thank God we didn’t stand in it. And we won’t ever be voting for it.

  7. Well private companies such as the NZX and RNZ are hardly 5 Eyes apparatus.

    The Chinese are known for cycber attacking Australia, so there is slways suspicion there. But Australia do criticize China a lot more than us.

    North Korea will cyber attack anyone if they think there’s Bitcoin in it for them. Russia surely like us more now John Key isn’t at the helm.

    It’s a hard one, anyone can do a Denial of Service attack, u just need more computing power than the server ur attacking.

    Obvious defense is having ur server limit the data per-second going to each user of ur website. Then attackers just use mutiple (hundreds/thousands) of computers – or roll over IP addresses.

    So websites then can block all IP addresses (computers) outside of New Zealand. So attackers use VPN, etc, etc ..

    The dance continues. Probably North Korea lol. I haven’t actually bothered to find out the real story here.

    • Funny how North Korea comes up as a baddy. If it was the it may well be a tiny payback for assisting the Americans who for no reason other than occupying Korea carpet bombed Northern Korea leaving no multi story building standing including family homes killing at least 2 million civilians.

      Holding North Korea as baddies may be a matter of guilty conscience.
      If it wasn’t for US designs to raid North Korea again then we probably could strike up trade with them.

    • The Chinese computing power will grow. They have massive resources.
      Why China is blamed is not a puzzle as it is repeated many times over some years. The goto blame spot.

      What is not being talked about is the effect of the false flag blame game.
      Australia like the good little US puppy it is, has attacked the new laws in Hong Kong to create stability from the riots manufactured by NED, the US congress funded and CIA run organisation who job it is to disrupt legitimate Governments.
      While our obedient MSM echo some of the US then Ozzie diatribe criticising China for creating internal security, NZ has not gone are far as Australia and this is recognised by China and NZ given some credit for that.

      Blaming China off hand is not in our best interests. It does nothing positive and does get noticed.

      https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1200081.shtml

      What we do have to be vigilant about is recognising when the US tell us its China without examinable evidence. If that does happen again then we need to talk with China and find out the other side of the story.

      I notice some contributors already have a mindset about China that includes many of the standard US propaganda lies that have been well exposes as such, but continue to circulate.

      We have just has another anniversary of 11 Sept and still Arabs are blamed on RNZ in spite of those named Arabs being located alive well after the event.

      The point is that if a lie is stated loud enough for long enough it leave most people believing it in their confusion.

  8. What’s the big deal. If NZ is in bed with the US, and part of Five Eyes, spying on countries outside of the Western empire, can we expect anything less that other countries will carry out these sorts of attacks?

    The best road forward is one of complete neutrality. As soon as we start hosting or abetting the military or intelligence activities of one power or the other, it automatically makes us a target for other opposing power/s

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