FG Records 3.8m Cyberattacks During Guber, State Assembly Polls
TECHDIGEST – The Federal Government through the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Professor, Isa Pantami, has revealed that a total of 3,834,244 attacks were recorded, originating from both within and outside Nigeria were recorded during the 2023 Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections.
A statement on Wednesday by the spokesperson for the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Uwa Sulaiman, noted that during this period, series of hacking attempts were recorded, including Distributed Denial of Service, email and IPS attacks, SSH Login Attempts, Brute force Injection attempts, Path Traversal, Detection Evasion, and Forceful Browsing.
“It may be recalled that on the 14th March, 2023, the Office of the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy released a Press Statement regarding the activities of the Ministry and its parastatals before, during and after the Presidential and National Assembly elections”.
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The statement noted, the Minister directed the Ministerial Standing Committee on Advisory Role for the Protection of Nigerian Cyberspace and ICT Infrastructure to further enhance the cyberspace surveillance activities of the three cybersecurity centres of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB).
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“It may also be recalled that the Committee, inaugurated by the Honourable Minister on the eve of the Presidential and National Assembly elections, was charged with the responsibilities monitoring of Telecommunication Infrastructure for the successful conduct of the 2023 General Elections; Developing and implementing plans to enhance the resilience of critical digital infrastructure against cyber threats; among others”.
The statement also noted that the activities of cyberthreat actors on the Nigerian cyberspace during the Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections are much lower than those during the Presidential and National Assembly elections.
“This is neither surprising nor unexpected as, Nigeria being Africa’s largest democracy, the Presidential and National Assembly elections are bound to attract much attention of everyone, including cyberthreat actors, than during the Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections”.
The Honourable Minister also reiterates that these attainments would not have been possible without the continued support of President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR in particular, and the administration in general, towards ensuring Nigeria’s successful transition into the digital economy.
