Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami has provided a detailed breakdown of catalogue of attacks recorded in Nigeria during the conduct of the Governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections, amounting to 3,834,244 attacks.
The attacks according to a statement from Dr Femi Adeluyi, Senior Technical Assistant ( Research and Development) to the Hon Minister indicated that on Friday 17th of March, 2023, a total of 1, 046,896 were recorded, while on Saturday,18th of March, 1, 481,847 attacks came in.
The statement also added that on Sunday, 19th of March, 327,718 Cyber attacks were recorded, and Monday 20th of March, recorded 977,783 attacks.
The cyber threats, according to the statement 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.
The statement equally explained that activities of cyberthreat actors on the Nigerian cyberspace during the Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections are much lower than during the Presidential and National Assembly elections, this was however attributed to the level of attention attracted by the contest into the office of the nation’s presidency, Nigeria being Africa’s largest democracy.
The Honourable Minister reiterates that these attainments would not have been possible without the continued support of President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR in particular, and the administration in general, towards ensuring Nigeria’s successful transition into the digital economy.
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.