The New Zealand Stock Exchange is the victim of a DDoS attack

The New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) has closed due to a DDoS attack for the second day in a row.

The Wellington-based NZX Stock Exchange "fell" at 11.24 a.m. on Wednesday and although the connectivity for investors was restored for a while, some trades stopped completely.

NZX said it had encountered "network connectivity issues" and that the NZX Main Board, NZX Debt Market (NZDX) and Fonterra Shareholders were suspended.

However, it then announced that they would continue trading with the rest of the market on Wednesday at 15:00.

The shutdown was followed by a shutdown and trading stopped on Tuesday afternoon due to a DDoS attack.

The incident takes place after a series of alleged attacks on cyberspace from foreign actors, such as targeting a number of governmental and private organizations in Australia.

In a statement earlier Wednesday, NZX claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack on hackers from abroad, saying that “he had experienced a volumetric DDoS attack from a offshore through the service provider network which affected the connectivity of its network ".

He said the attack affected NZX websites and the announcement platform, forcing it to stop trading at 3,57pm.

He said the attack had "softened" and that market operations would work normally on Wednesday, but that this attack raised many questions about safety.

A DDoS attack aims to overload internet site traffic by infecting large numbers of computers with malware bombarding the targeted site with access requests.

Professor Dave Parry, of the Department of Computer Science at Auckland University of Technology, said it was a "very serious attack". He also pointed out issues security which were probably caused by so many people working from home. "Unfortunately, the inconvenience caused by COVID has increased the number of people working from home, which automatically means that these attacks are easier than usual to carry out since the security levels in computers that we have at home is low ".