FG Recorded Over 12m Cyberattacks During Presidential Elections— Minister Of Communications Reveals

The federal government has disclosed that during the February 25th presidential and national assembly elections, 12,988,978 cyberattacks were recorded in the nation’s cyberspace.

Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Pantami, who disclosed this, said on elections day alone over 6.9 million attacks were recorded.

Pantami said the attacks were successfully blocked owing to the sophisticated infrastructure on grounds by different agencies of government charged with the responsibility of protecting the nation’s cyberspace.

The Minister thanked President Muhammadu Buhari for providing the enabling environment for agencies of government to perform their assignments without let or hindrances.

He said;

“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.

“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, Ppth 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.”