Computerworld

Herald chief denies cyberwar

Wilson & Horton's chief information officer says he does not believe there was ever a denial of service attack on W&H's ISP, Asia Online.

Wilson & Horton's chief information officer does not believe there was a denial of service attack on W&H's ISP, Asia Online.

W&H ran a front page story last week on claims by Asia Online helpdesk staff that serious problems with the company's network were due to attacks from China as a spin-off from the US-Chinese "cyberwar".

Although other Asia Online customers, including New Zealand Post and IDG, suffered problems, W&H was badly hit last week and after the story ran, the New Zealand Herald Online was unavailable to Asia Online customers for two days. Customers of Clear and Paradise and some JetStream customers were also unable to reach the site at times.

W&H CIO Garry McKenzie says he does not believe there was a Chinese cyberattack or a problem in the W&H network, but misconfigured software on an Asia Online router.

"We resolved the problem over the weekend and we're waiting for official comment from them," says McKenzie. "We had their people in and people from Cisco in over the weekend and we believe we've solved the problem and we've now asked for them to make official comment to us."

Asia Online general manager Kevin Francis did not return several calls for comment.