AUTHORITIES say that at least 12.9 million cyber attacks were recorded from within and outside Nigeria during the recently concluded Presidential and National Assembly polls.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Pantami, who made this disclosure on Tuesday, said that over 6.9 million attacks were recorded on election day alone.
Pantami said the attacks were successfully blocked by different agencies of government charged with the responsibility of protecting the nation’s cyberspace.
The Minister noted that in the build-up to the presidential elections, threat intelligence revealed an astronomical increase in cyber threats to Nigeria’s cyberspace.
“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,’’ Pantami said.
“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.”