Presidential Election: How FG Blocked Over 12.9 Million Cyberattacks – Isa Pantami

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Pantami has disclosed how the Federal Government managed to block about 12.9 million cyberattacks during the just-concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections.

Naija News gathered that the minister said the attacks were launched from both within the country and outside of the country.

According to him only on the day of the presidential and national assembly election, 6.9 million attacks were recorded and blocked.

Pantami in a statement issued by his media aide, Uwa Suleiman, explained that days before the presidential election, threat intelligence revealed an astronomical increase in cyber threats to Nigeria’s cyberspace.

The minister while appreciating President Muhammadu Buhari for supporting government agencies in their duties noted that all the attacks were successfully blocked due to the sophisticated infrastructure on grounds at different agencies of government.

Pantami further explained that “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.

“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.

“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.”

He also appreciated the efforts of the cybersecurity centre established under his Ministry, including the National Information Technology (NITDA)’s Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team (CERT), 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.