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Speaker 1: The first I want to tell you about my day,

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Speaker 1: and then I'll get Paul Spain on to explain about

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Speaker 1: my day. But my day, it's lovely at the moment

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Speaker 1: doing a Heather's job. Because normally I do a breakfast

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Speaker 1: show on a rock radio station called Gold. You should

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Speaker 1: try it sometime. It's very good. And so I'm normally

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Speaker 1: up early. I'm not you know, I don't get to sleep,

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Speaker 1: and at the moment this week, I am not doing

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Speaker 1: that show. I'm doing this show that means I sleep,

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Speaker 1: I do some breakfast and that's lovely. Read the newspaper,

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Speaker 1: start thinking about what I'm going to say, go to

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Speaker 1: the gym. So I went to the gym at eight

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Speaker 1: o'clock today and I did a good hour and a

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Speaker 1: half workout. And as I'm coming home, hot and sweaty

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Speaker 1: and getting ready to get into it, have a shower

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Speaker 1: and start writing stuff, I get an alert that's saying

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Speaker 1: Microsoft Outlook is down. It's a global cyber attack. It's

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Speaker 1: involving microsofte me emails down. Therefore, we are working with

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Speaker 1: Microsoft on the problem. This caused me great consternation because

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Speaker 1: how I write my stuff is on Microsoft word through

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Speaker 1: Outlook and then share it with work on Google. So

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Speaker 1: if I'm writing at home and I can't email myself

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Speaker 1: and all that sort of thing, and I can't use

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Speaker 1: the Google Home to actually sort of mirror the stuff back,

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Speaker 1: how amight I get these bond mots to myself? So

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Speaker 1: I actually told my producer who phoned up and we're

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Speaker 1: talking about I said, I'm going to stick it on

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Speaker 1: my memory stick. You mean you've got a memory stick

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Speaker 1: and I've got a memory stick. You're not supposed to

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Speaker 1: bring memory sticks in because you plug them into computers,

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Speaker 1: they bring in viruses or viray whatever. Anyway, I got

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Speaker 1: a memory stick and I was thinking about that, and

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Speaker 1: then we figured out how to get service back. So

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Speaker 1: joining me now is Paul Spain, tech commentator and Guerrilla

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Speaker 1: Tech CEO.

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Speaker 2: Hello, Paul, Hello, how are we doing? Andrew?

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Speaker 1: Well, we're good now that we're back online. I'm getting

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Speaker 1: a bit tired of the Microsoft cyber attacks. What's happening here?

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Speaker 2: Well, you know what we know around today is it

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Speaker 2: was largely in New Zealand that was impacted. So this

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Speaker 2: one wasn't so much of a global issue. It was

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Speaker 2: very very focused on New Zealand, and it appears as

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Speaker 2: though what we're dealing with is something called a distributed

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Speaker 2: denial of service attack, which you can, if you want to,

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Speaker 2: sort of think of it simply. It's a little bit

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Speaker 2: like when we have a protest that floods the motorway

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Speaker 2: with tractors or trucks or some other such thing, and

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Speaker 2: you've got an adversary who is basically trying to trying

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Speaker 2: to cause problems for Microsoft and Microsoft customers by flooding

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Speaker 2: sort of certain areas of the Internet with too much

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Speaker 2: data or traffic as we call it, and that brings

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Speaker 2: things to sometimes to a standstill, sometimes just sort of

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Speaker 2: slows slows things down. And that's really what's what's happened today. Now,

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Speaker 2: a lot of people haven't felt the pain, but other

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Speaker 2: people have.

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Speaker 1: Like me, who wants to do this sort of thing

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Speaker 1: to us? I mean, we've got weird New zeal We've

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Speaker 1: got no enemies in the world.

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Speaker 2: Well, there are always folks out to, you know, have

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Speaker 2: an impact. Sometimes that's they want to cause a financial impact,

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Speaker 2: and then they can put pressure on an organization such

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Speaker 2: as Microsoft and say, look, we're gonna you know, stop

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Speaker 2: your operation in New Zealand unless you front up and

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Speaker 2: drop you know x amount of you know, funds in

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Speaker 2: our direction, usually in cryptocurrency. So basically it's it's a

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Speaker 2: you know, it's used from that that perspective of a

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Speaker 2: ransom or a bribery type situation. Or it can be

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Speaker 2: you know, a country, so it can be sort of

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Speaker 2: you know, politically driven. It can be a country, uh,

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Speaker 2: you know, a particular cause that someone's trying to push

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Speaker 2: and to make a little bit of a point. So,

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Speaker 2: you know, these are the situations we see.

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Speaker 1: But today's outage, we don't know who did it.

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Speaker 2: No, I haven't. I haven't seen anything to you know,

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Speaker 2: to indicate that at this point. And there there are

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Speaker 2: often reason why an organization you might know but might

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Speaker 2: not just you know, disclose that publicly at a given

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Speaker 2: point in time. But you know, maybe we'll share you know,

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Speaker 2: further information down the track.

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Speaker 1: Was there any data taken?

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Speaker 2: This type of attack generally the attacker has no access

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Speaker 2: to you know, to any anybody's data. It's more you

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Speaker 2: know that that as I say, they're kind of it's

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Speaker 2: like flooding a motorway. So it's not like they're they're

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Speaker 2: inside your systems, inside your building and so on, it's

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Speaker 2: more they're trying to block you get access, you gaining access,

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Speaker 2: rather than than them having having any level of access themselves.

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Speaker 1: Did Microsoft were they helpful or were they hendry?

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Speaker 2: Look, you know, I think we expect organizations like Microsoft

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Speaker 2: to be really well geared up to deal with this

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Speaker 2: this type of attack, and you know, in this case, yeah,

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Speaker 2: maybe they didn't kind of get it quite right in

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Speaker 2: terms of their their ability to to you know, to

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Speaker 2: block this and deal with it correctly. Yeah. They I mean, yeah,

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Speaker 2: there's certainly certainly some culpability, you know, I think too,

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Speaker 2: you know, to a degree. But you know, depending on

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Speaker 2: the scale and the and the size of you know,

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Speaker 2: of this type of attack, you know, there there probably

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Speaker 2: is a point where a company can can completely block it.

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Speaker 2: And and there's a point where, yeah, those sort of

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Speaker 2: attackers can can have a level of impact that we've

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Speaker 2: seen other New Zealand organizations hit with this type of

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Speaker 2: attack n z X in the past. Uh, and they

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Speaker 2: you know, maybe didn't have some things quite right and

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Speaker 2: that you know, they made some changes and and you

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Speaker 2: know they eventually you know, got through that and came

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Speaker 2: back to full operation.

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Speaker 1: So Paul, one last question, Okay, and after CrowdStrike and

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Speaker 1: after realizing how many people use outlook and teams, are we,

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Speaker 1: in fact, in the business world generally relying on too

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Speaker 1: small a number of companies to provide our services techwise,

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Speaker 1: So it's easy to take out a whole country. It's

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Speaker 1: easy to almost take out a whole.

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Speaker 2: World in simple terms. You know, I would say, yes,

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Speaker 2: I wish there was more competition, uh, you know, to

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Speaker 2: these these biggest global providers. And so if you look

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Speaker 2: at a Microsoft three sixty five, which is what the

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Speaker 2: very large majority of organizations in New Zealand use for

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Speaker 2: you know, for their core technology email and document editing

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Speaker 2: and storage and spreadsheets and so on, they're very very dominant.

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Speaker 2: Google have a very small slice of that that that

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Speaker 2: market here. It would be great if, you know, if

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Speaker 2: Google and others we're more competitive and that it was

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Speaker 2: split a little bit more evenly. But at the moment,

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Speaker 2: you know, Microsoft's offerings, you know, are generally, you know,

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Speaker 2: probably head and shoulders above the competition, and so therefore

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Speaker 2: they hold the you know, the line's share of the market.

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Speaker 2: It would be much easier if that wasn't the case,

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Speaker 2: but it's where we're at right now.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely Paul, Thank you so much. Paul from Gorilla Gorilla

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Speaker 1: Tech CEO, tech commentator.

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Speaker 2: For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to

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