Ministry monitors cyberspace, claims INEC, others witness 12.9m attacks
Dr Isa Ali Pantami
Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy has said while monitoring the cyberspace, about 12.9 million attacks were launched against servers of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and others during the February 25, 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections from within and outside Nigeria.
Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami, who made the disclosure, however, said the committee, set up and chaired by board chairman of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), with Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of NCC, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and Galaxy Backbone Bone (GBB) as members, successfully protected the cyberspace, blocked the attacks and/or escalated them to relevant institutions for appropriate action.
In a statement by his spokesperson, Uwa Suleiman, the minister said the committee swung into action on February 24, 2023 and finished its work on 28.
“During this period, a series of hacking attempts was recorded, including Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), email and IPS attacks, SSH Login Attempts, Brute force Injection attempts, Path Traversal, Detection Evasion and Forceful Browsing.
“A total of 12,988,978 attacks were recorded, originating from both within and outside Nigeria. It is worth noting that the centres successfully blocked these attacks and/or escalated them to relevant institutions for appropriate action,” he said.
According to him, it is worth noting that in the run-up to this year’s general elections, threat intelligence revealed an astronomical rise in cyber threats, explaining that threats to public websites and portals averaged 1,550,000 daily.
He sad this skyrocketed to 6,997,277 on presidential election day.
Pantami, said: “As part of its mandate, the ministry is to ensure adequate protection of Nigeria’s cyberspace to a level that citizens would 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 the Nigerian cyberspace, the parastatals under the supervision of the ministry have established cybersecurity centres, namely National Information Technology’s (NITDA) Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team (CERRT), Nigerian Communications Commission’s Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) and Galaxy Backbone’s (GBB) Security Operations Centre (SOC).
The professor of cybersecurity admitted that the parastatals have played a crucial role in providing enabling environment for successful conduct of credible, free, fair and transparent elections.
