FG blocks 3.8m cyberattacks during governorship election

The Federal Government said it successfully blocked a total of 3,834,244 cyberattacks originating within and outside Nigeria during the last governorship and state assembly elections.

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, who disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday, March 22, 203, said the blockage was facilitated by the infrastructure put in place by the government to monitor activities in the nation's cyberspace during and after the elections.

This comes after the government said it repelled more than 12.9 million internet-based criminal attacks targeted at Nigeria during the presidential and national assembly elections.

Meanwhile, Pantami on Wednesday said the standing committee set up by the Federal Government to ensure that the nation's cyberspace consolidated its feats during the presidential election delivered its mandate of safe and secure cyberspace during the last polls.

Giving details of the latest attacks, the Minister said 1.05m attempts were recorded on the eve of the last elections while 1.5m attacks were recorded on D-Day.

He added that 327,718 attacks were recorded on the day after the election, while 977,783 attacks were launched on the country’s IT infrastructure on Monday, March 20, 2023.

The statement partly read: "During this period and as previously reported, a series of hacking attempts were recorded, including 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.

“A total of 3,834,244 attacks were recorded, originating from both within and outside Nigeria. Daily breakdown of these attacks are Friday 17th March 2023: 1,046,896; Saturday 18th March 2023: 1,481,847; Sunday 19th March 2023: 327,718; Monday 20th March 2023: 977,783.

“It is interesting to note that the activities of cyber threat actors on Nigerian cyberspace during the governorship 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 cyberthreat 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.”