I was sort of responsible for the massive internet outage that happened 4 years ago in NZ

r/

New Zealand, 2nd Sept 2021

No, I’m not saying I’m Mr. Robot.

I was a stupid 18 year old playing around with some Kali Linux software.

It’s a cheap, annoying trick I’d used a few times before. It’s more commonly known as DoS (Denial of Service), very different and often confused with the well-known DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service).

One night, I wrote a script that ran this software in a loop, targeting an unsuspecting neighbor. A few minutes later, my internet died.

Not just my internet. Most of the country.

Quoting from Stuff NZ – During lockdown, Vocus NZ initially reported a DDoS attack on their network, but later clarified it was actually a DoS attack on one of their customers.

Essentially, my localized DoS attack was mistaken by Vocus for a DDoS, prompting them to deploy a mitigation rule that was misconfigured from the start. Online banking, card payments, general internet use were all down, simply because their mitigation plan had ‘bugs’. Vocus kept a lot of details to themselves.

I’m roughly a year away from completing my Bachelor of Computer Science degree, with a major focus on cybersecurity. I hope to improve cybersecurity here in New Zealand, it’s honestly still pretty underdeveloped in some areas.

Comments

  1. mayzon89 Avatar

    Did the neighbour do something to piss you off?

  2. im_going_to_jail_ Avatar

    This is one of the best confessions out there. You saved me from remote school work love you

  3. fiftysevens Avatar

    Did you face any backlash for Vocus or the neighbour? Did either of them know it was you?

  4. _JustKaira Avatar

    You fucker.

    I was managing a call centre at the time and the amount of team members who were miraculously affected by this was staggering.