By Chinenye Anuforo and Adanna Nnamani
A total, 3,834,244 cyberattacks were detected during Nigeria’s last governorship and State Assembly elections, held on March 18, 2023, according to Prof Isa Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy.
Pantami said the attacks originated from both within and outside the nation.
According to him, 1,046,896 attacks were recorded on Friday 17th, 1,481,847 on Saturday 18th, which was the election day, while 1,481,847 were recorded on Sunday 19th March.
Additionally, 977,783 attacks were said to be recorded on Monday March 20, 2023.
This was disclosed in a statement signed by the Minister’s Senior Technical Assistant, Dr Femi Adeluyi, on Wednesday.
“It may be recalled that on the March 14, 2023, the Office of the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy released a press statement regarding the activities of the Ministry and its parastatals before, during and after the Presidential and National Assembly elections. As a follow up to that and in line with the Ministry’s mandate as well as in our efforts aimed at supporting the initiatives of securing the Nigerian cyberspace, the Minister directed the Ministerial Standing Committee on Advisory Role for the Protection of Nigerian Cyberspace and ICT Infrastructure to further enhance the cyberspace surveillance activities of the three cybersecurity centres of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB).” The statement said.
It further recalled that the Minister, inaugurated the committee on the eve of the Presidential and National Assembly elections and charged it with the responsibilities of monitoring of Telecommunication Infrastructure for the successful conduct of the 2023 General Elections; developing and implementing plans to enhance the resilience of critical digital infrastructure against cyber threats and designing procedures using technologies to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber-attacks, as well as developing the ability to quickly recover from any damage that is done amongst other functions.
“Based on the Minister’s directives, the Committee provided close oversight on the activities of the cybersecurity Centres, from Friday 17th March, 2023 to Monday 20th March, 2023. 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,” the statement further stated.
The minister noted that the activities of cyberthreat actors on the Nigerian cyberspace during the Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections were 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.” He added