Jennifer Lawrence 'nude photos' malware causes internet meltdown in New Zealand

New Zealanders keen to view hacked photos of naked celebrities are being blamed for a nationwide internet meltdown involving the country's main provider.

It is believed a handful of computer users clicked links on Friday evening believing they would take them to the illicit images, but instead they inadvertently installed malware triggering a crippling internet attack.

It took telecommunications giant Spark, the rebranded Telecom, until yesterday to repair what it termed a "dynamic" cyberattack that overloaded its system covering more than 600,000 customers.

The intimate celebrity photos, which included actress Jennifer Lawrence and singers Avril Lavigne and Rihanna, were stolen from a cloud storage system.

Spark tweeted it was aware that when people clicked on some links they inadvertently installed malware "generating a high amount of traffic to overseas sites".

Computer security specialists Trend Micro issued an alert shortly before the attack began warning not to open the links related to the nude celebrities.