Rob O’Neill reports:

Thousands of Inland Revenue files were locked up after New Zealand’s tax department became the target of a cryptolocking attack in November.

IRD said that in addition to the phishing emails targeting customers, the department also regularly receives phishing emails attempting to obtain money or information or to compromise the Inland Revenue environment.

“In November 2017, a link in a phishing email was clicked on resulting in a cryptolocker malware executing within Inland Revenue which encrypted 3500 files,” a statement said.