We recorded over 12.9 million cyber attacks on presidential poll, says FG

The Federal Government has revealed not less than 12.9 million cyberattacks from within and outside the country were recorded during the just-concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Pantami, who disclosed this said on elections day alone over 6.9 million attacks were recorded

He announced the attacks were successfully blocked owing to the sophisticated infrastructure on grounds by different agencies of government charged with the responsibility of protecting the nation’s cyberspace.

Pantami commended President Muhammadu Buhari for providing the enabling environment for agencies of government to perform their assignments without let or hindrances.

The Minister in a statement by his media aide, Uwa Suleiman, noted that in the build-up to the presidential elections, threat intelligence revealed an astronomical increase in cyber threats to Nigeria’s cyberspace.

Providing details of the cyberattacks, Pantami said: “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.

“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.

“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.”

Pantami praised 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