The Nigerian Government has said not less than 12.9million multifaceted Cyber-attacks were recorded internally and externally in Nigeria during and after the just concluded presidential and National Assembly elections in the country.
In a statement credited to the minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Professor Isa, Ali, Pantami, about 12.9million cybersecurity threats were recorded from within and outside Nigeria during and after the 2023 general elections. The minister disclosed that on the general election day alone, over 6.9 million attacks were recorded.
Professor Pantami however noted that most of the attacks were successfully neutered as a result of the sophisticated infrastructure that were put in place by different government agencies responsible for protecting the nation’s cyberspace.
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The minister was also reported by the Nation to have said that in the building up to the presidential election, threat intelligence revealed an astronomical increase in cyber threats to Nigeria’s Cyberspace.
The statement reads in part: “During this period, a series of hacking attempts were recorded, including Distributed Denial of Service (DDS) email and IPS attacks, SSH Login Attempts, Brute Force Injection attempts, Path Traversal, Defection Evation and Forceful Browsing.
“A total of 12,988,978 cyber attacks were recorded, originating from 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 minister lauded the parastatals under the supervision of his ministry for playing significant roles towards the successful conduct of a credible, free, fair and transparent election in the country. He also commended President Muhammad Buhari for providing enabling environment for agencies of government to perform their assignments without hindrances.
According to Professor, also instrumental to the successful curtailment of the cybersecurity threats received during the elections period are some cybersecurity centers under his ministry including the Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team (CERRT) of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) of the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) and the Security Operations Center (SOC) of the Galaxy Back Bone (GBB).