Prof Isa Pantami, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy has revealed how the Federal Government managed to block approximately 12.9 million cyberattacks during the recently concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections.
WITHIN NIGERIA learned that the minister stated that the attacks were launched from both within and outside the country.
According to him, 6.9 million attacks were recorded and blocked on the day of the presidential and national assembly elections.
Pantami explained in a statement issued by his media aide, Uwa Suleiman, that threat intelligence revealed an astronomical increase in cyber threats to Nigeria’s cyberspace just days before the presidential election.
While thanking President Muhammadu Buhari for assisting government agencies in their duties, the minister stated that all attacks were successfully blocked due to sophisticated infrastructure on the ground at various government agencies.
Pantami further explained that;
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.
He also praised the National Information Technology (NITDAComputer )’s Emergency Readiness and Response Team (CERT), the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCCComputer )’s Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT), and Galaxy Backbone (GBBSecurity )’s Operations Centre (SOC) for their efforts.
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