3.8m Cyberattacks Blocked During Governorship Election – FG

The federal government says it prevented over 3.8 million cyberattacks during the March 18th governorship and state house of assembly election.

These fresh attacks came just three weeks after more than 12.9 million internet-based criminal attacks were launched on Nigeria during the presidential and national assembly elections.

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Prof Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami who disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday said the attacks originated from both within and outside Nigeria.

Pantami said 1.05m attacks were recorded a day to the governorship and state houses of assembly while 1.5m attacks were recorded on election day.

The minister added that 327,718 attacks were recorded on Sunday, March 19 while 977,783 attacks were launched on the country’s IT infrastructure on Monday, March 20.

During election period, he said a series of hacking attempts that were recorded, include “Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), email and Internet Protocol Spoofing (IPS) attacks, SSH Login Attempts, Brute force Injection attempts, Path Traversal, Detection Evasion, and Forceful Browsing.”

“It is interesting to note 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. Furthermore, the Honourable Minister is confident that the implementation of some recommendations as well as measures taken to fortify our cyber defence mechanisms might have helped in this”, the statement signed on behalf of Pantami by his technical aide, Dr Femi Adeluyi said.

But Pantami said the attacks were neutralised by agencies under his ministry.

He said the ministry had earlier developed and implemented plans to enhance the resilience of critical digital infrastructure against cyber threats in the country.

He added that the country had designed procedures and used superior technologies to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber-attacks, as well as developed the ability to quickly recover from any damage that is done when attacks occur.

He also said a comprehensive risk assessment was also carried out while also analysing the nation’s current cybersecurity capabilities, and identifying gaps that need to be addressed.