3.8m cyberattacks launched during guber, state assembly polls-Pantami

A total of 3,834,244 cyberattacks were made against Nigeria during Saturday’s governorship and state assembly elections, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, has said.

Pantami, according to a statement yesterday by his technical aide, Femi Adeluyi, said the attacks originated from within and outside Nigeria. 

He had said over 12.9 million similar attacks were recorded during the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections. 

Pantami said 1.05 million attacks were recorded a day to the governorship and state assembly; 1.5 million, on the election day. 

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He said 327,718 attacks were recorded on March 19; and 977,783, March 20. 

During election period, he said a series of hacking attempts 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 cyber threat 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 cyber threat 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 minister, who said the attacks were neutralised by agencies under his ministry which, he noted,  had earlier developed and implemented plans to enhance the resilience of critical digital infrastructure against cyber threats in the country. 

He said Nigeria 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.