Presidential poll: FG records 12.9m cyberattacks

No fewer than 12.9 million cyberattacks were recorded from within and outside the country during the just-concluded presidential and National Assembly polls.

In a statement released yesterday by his media assistant, Uwa Suleiman, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Pantami, revealed that more over 6.9 million attacks were documented on election day alone.

Pantami claims that the sophisticated infrastructure put in place by the various government organizations tasked with safeguarding the country’s cyberspace allowed the attacks to be effectively thwarted.

The minister praised President Muhammadu Buhari for creating an atmosphere that allowed government agencies to carry out their duties without interference, but noted that, in the lead-up to the presidential elections, intelligence had shown an exponential rise in cyberthreats to Nigeria’s cyberspace.

“A total of 12,988,978 attacks were recorded, originating from both within and outside Nigeria. It is worth noting that the Centers successfully blocked these attacks and/or escalated them to the relevant institutions for appropriate action.

“During this period, a series of hacking attempts were 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.

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“The parastatals, under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, have played a crucial role in providing the enabling environment for the successful conduct of a credible, free, fair, and transparent election,” he said.

Pantami also commended the cybersecurity centre established under his ministry, including the National Information Technology, NITDA’s Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team, CERRT; the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC’s Computer Security Incident Response Team, CSIRT; and Galaxy Backbone, GBB’s Security Operations Centre, SOC, for a job well done.