Lagos denies cyberattack on website

Lagos State Government on Saturday denied that its website was hit by a cyberattack during the week.

The state commissioner for science and technology Hakeem Fahm denied the cyberattack in a statement.

“I wish to come out to clear the air on the issue. This information is not true. Our website was never hacked,” Fahm said.

The commissioner’s response comes about 48-hours after The Guardian reported that the Lagos State Government suffered a cyberattack claimed by a group of hackers Anonymous.

Checks by The Guardian showed that the state government website – Lagosstate.gov.ng was inaccessible for over two hours on Thursday from 9:00 am to 11:30 am.

Below is the screenshot of the Lagos State website being offline at 11:25 am.

A screenshot of Lagos State website being offline at 11:25 am on Thursday, October 22.

Despite pictorial evidence, Fahm claimed that the reported cyberattack on the website was a ‘misinformation’. He never said in his statement whether the website was under maintenance during the period it was inaccessible.

“For the avoidance of doubt, I hereby confirm that the Lagos State website is up and running perfectly,” Fahm said after about 48-hours.

Earlier, a staff of the Lagos State Government who uploads content on the website told our correspondent, “I am not aware of the attack on the website” but later confirmed that “the state government website is down” on Thursday.

The staff, who pleaded anonymity, said, “We will be in touch with the ministry of science and technology to get it fixed and running again – they are responsible for such technical parts of the website.”

The attack on Lagos State website was not the first attack by Anonymous which claimed to be working in solidarity with the ongoing #EndSARS protests against police brutality, extortion, harassment and extrajudicial killing of Nigerians.

Other government agency websites Anonymous claimed it attacked are the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), National Industrial Court, confidential SARS information and details of hundreds of contracts awarded by the Edo State Government were leaked, and the Twitter handle of the National Broadcasting Commission hacked.

The CBN and the EFCC, however, denied that their websites were hacked. But the EFCC said there were attempts to hack its website.