Cyber attacks

Cyber attack on Telecom

NetSafe says Telecom has been too slow in its response to a cyber attack that has affected more than 70,000 customers.

Radio NZ,

17 February, 2013

The trouble began over a week ago with a spam attack on their Yahoo! Xtra email accounts.

Telecom on Saturday cancelled the passwords of more than 60,000 customers, on top of about 15,000 who had to change theirs earlier in the week.

NetSafe chief executive Martin Cocker said this should have happened much sooner.

Mr Cocker said changing passwords will stop cyber criminals' direct access to the email account, but once the information is out, there was no taking it back.

He said information stolen over the past week, like contact lists, could continue to be used for further attacks.

Telecom response defended

Telecom says it was forced to act fast when it cancelled customers' passwords after a cyber attack last week.

Thousands of customers are still unable to access their email accounts.

The trouble began with a spam attack that meant infected emails were sent by hackers from Yahoo! Xtra customer accounts.

Telecom on Saturday night cancelled the passwords of more than 15% of its 450,000 customers.

Retail chief executive Chris Quin said 60,000 customers might have been compromised, so it was decided to change their passwords and tell them they were doing so at the same time, not in advance because of the danger.

He told Morning Report that Telecom does not have the resources to handle a sudden problem for 60,000 customers and 50% more staff had put on to try to help deal with this.

Waiting times on Telecom call centres were about an hour on Sunday and Mr Quin said he hopes to get this reduced on Monday.

Despite the problems. Mr Quin said 90% of customers have been able to change their passwords on line.

Listen to more from Chris Quin on Morning Report

Customer with problem

One disgruntled customer, Ted Woodfield of Wellington, said he changed his password but was then told to do so again, but this was rejected.

In the end he could not get in to his system at all.

Listen to more on Morning Report