Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, has revealed that a total of 3,834,244 cyberattacks launched within and outside Nigeria were blocked during the gubernatorial and state assembly elections that took precedence on March 18.
The minister attributed this blockage to cyberspace infrastructure put in place by the government to monitor activities in the nation’s cyberspace before, during and after the elections.
The minister who spoke through a statement signed by his Senior Special Assistant on Technical Matters, Dr Femi Adeluyi, on Wednesday, commended the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), for the support and approvals of initiatives to promote the Digital Economy and cyber security.
The statement partly reads,” 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.”
Recall that over 12 million blocked cyberattacks were recorded during the presidential polls, according to Pantami.
