The Federal Government, on Tuesday, said a total of 12,988,978 cyber attacks were reported from within and outside the country during the February 25 presidential and national assembly elections.
Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, made this known in a statement issued on Tuesday, by his media aide, Uwa Suleiman.
He said 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.
The Minister said the attacks were successfully blocked owing to the sophisticated infrastructure on the ground by different agencies of government charged with the responsibility of protecting the nation’s cyberspace.
He added that the parastatals, under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, had played a crucial role in providing the enabling environment for the successful conduct of a credible, free, fair, and transparent election.
“A total of 12,988,978 attacks were recorded, originating from both within and outside Nigeria. It is worth noting that the Centers successfully blocked these attacks and/or escalated them to the relevant institutions for appropriate action.
“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.
“The parastatals, under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, have played a crucial role in providing the enabling environment for the successful conduct of a credible, free, fair, and transparent election.”
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.