The Federal Government said a total of 12,988,978 attacks were recorded during the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections in Nigeria.
Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja.
The statement issued by his media aide, Uwa Suleiman, said the attacks originated from both within and outside Nigeria, adding that threats to public websites and portals averaged around 1,550,000 daily.
He added that the attacks skyrocketed to 6,997,277 on the Presidential and National Assembly elections day.
“It is worth noting that in the run-up to the 2023 general elections, threat intelligence revealed an astronomical increase in cyber threats to Nigerian cyberspace.
“Generally, threats to public websites and portals averaged around 1,550,000 daily. However, they skyrocketed to 6,997,277 on the elections days”, Pantami said.
DIPLOMATIC DIARY reports that the Minister had on February 24, inaugurated a Ministerial Standing Committee on Advisory Role for the Protection of Nigerian Cyberspace and ICT Infrastructure.
However, the statement said the committee started work on Feb. 24 and ended on Feb. 28,2023.
“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.
“It is worth noting that the centers successfully blocked these attacks and escalated them to the relevant institutions for appropriate action”, he said.
The Minister commended President Muhammadu Buhari for providing the enabling environment for agencies of government to perform their assignments without hindrances.
He 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.
