Alex Omenye
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Pantami, has disclosed that the Federal Government recorded a total of 12,988,978 cyber attacks during the presidential elections.
The minister stated that the attack came from both locally and internationally.
According to the minister, at least, 1,550,000 threats were targeted at public websites and portals daily.
He also added that the figures skyrocketed to 6,997,277 on the day of the presidential elections.
According to a statement on Tuesday by the
Spokesperson of the minister, Uwa Sulaiman, said during this period, a series of hacking attempts were recorded, which included Distributed Denial of Service, email and IPS attacks, SSH Login Attempts, Brute force Injection attempts, Path Traversal, Detection Evasion, and Forceful Browsing.
The statement also stated that the minister had foreseen the attack and directed all the parastatals to enhance their 24/7 monitoring of the networks and traffic for potential attacks from 24th February 2023 to 27th February 2023.
“As part of its mandate, the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy is expected to ensure adequate protection of Nigeria’s cyberspace to a level that citizens will have confidence in digital services. This mandate aligns with the goals and objectives of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy for a Digital Nigeria (NDEPS).
In line with this mandate and in our efforts at supporting the initiatives of securing Nigerian cyberspace, the parastatals under the supervision of the Ministry have established Cybersecurity Centers, namely, the National Information Technology (NITDA)’s Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team (CERT), the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)’s Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT), and Galaxy Backbone (GBB)’s Security Operations Centre (SOC).,” The statement reads
“These Centers were established between 2020 and 2022 in line with the Honourable Minister’s policy directives and have been monitoring Nigerian cyberspace for potential threats and taking appropriate actions to mitigate them, both individually and collectively as well as in collaboration with other stakeholders.
It is worth noting that in the run-up to the 2023 General Elections, threat intelligence revealed an astronomical increase in cyber threats to Nigerian cyberspace.
“Generally, threats to public websites and portals averaged around 1,550,000 daily. However, this skyrocketed to 6,997,277 on Presidential Election Day.,” The minister said.
The minister reiterated that the successful foil of the attacks is a result of the support of the administration of President, and Major General, Muhammadu Buhari,(retd.) towards ensuring Nigeria’s successful transition into the digital economy.
The minister’s disclosure however leaves many questions to be answered on the possibility of 12m cyber attacks. Cobalt.io, a foremost security firm puts daily cyberattacks at 2,220 and that’s roughly 800,000 attacks each year.