Almost 13 Million Cyber Attacks Recorded During Polls –FG

According to Isa Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy, there were 12.99 million cyberattacks during the 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections.

He said that the attacks were registered between 24th February and 28th February, with the presidential election day (25th February) garnering 6.99 million attacks alone.

He said this as he described what the ministry he directs will be doing before, during, and after the 2023 presidential election.

A statement signed by Pantami’s spokesperson, Uwa Sulaiman, read in part, “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, this skyrocketed to 6,997,277 on Presidential Election Day.”

It added, “The committee’s activity started on 24th February 2023 and ended on 28th February 2023. During this period, a series of hacking attempts were recorded, including Distributed Denial of Service, 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 centres successfully blocked these attacks and/or escalated them to the relevant institutions for appropriate action.”