A Waikato high school has been named among the victims of a worldwide ransomware attack which hit thousands of companies yesterday.
Current reports suggest around 200 businesses around the world were affected after an update for technology management firm Kaseya's cloud-based platform VSA was targeted ahead of Fourth of July celebrations in the US.
Kaseya has over 40,000 customers worldwide.
The attack was believed to have been carried out by ransomware syndicate REvil, according to security firm Huntress.
An analysis has shown that 11 out of 2400 schools may have been affected by the attack, Ministry of Education deputy secretary business enablement and support, Zoe Griffiths, told 1 NEWS.
"We are working with those schools to provide them with support and will continue to identify if other schools have been impacted."
St Peter's School chief operating officer Rob Campbell told 1 NEWS the discovery was made yesterday that their "network security had been compromised by a third-party supplier’s software relating to the Kaseya Ransomware global attack".
"Yesterday morning (US time), the supplier confirmed that it had suffered a ‘sophisticated cyberattack’," he said.
"Our IT team took swift action and disabled our entire network bled within a few hours. Overnight, they have been checking the stability of our network and backups. Our IT systems are inactive while this work continues."
Campbell said the school's data has been "successfully backed up early Saturday morning prior to the attack" and the team is now working to restore data.
The school systems will be inactive "for at least the next 48 hours," the school said in a Facebook post this afternoon.
An email has been sent out to parents, and urgent messages can be sent to cambridgestpeters@gmail.com. The school advised anyone with concerns not to use any St Peter's email addresses as they will not connect.
"We will keep you informed as we work through the process," St Peter's School said.
Campbell said the cyber attack "won't impact students" as the school has been closed for a three-week school holiday break since Friday.
The Ministry of Education says 11 other schools may have been affected along with St Peter’s College in Cambridge. (Source: Other)
Nadia Yousef, CERT NZ's incident response manager, said it was aware of the Kaseya security incident and that the company has a presence in New Zealand.
"The incident is still unfolding, and the scope will become clearer as Kaseya and potentially affected organisations complete their investigations."
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