Nigeria’s internet space was hit by over 3.8 million cyber attacks during the 2023 Gubernatorial and State Assembly Elections, Professor Isa Pantami, Communications and Digital Economy Minister said today.

A series of hacking attempts including Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), email and internet Protocol Spoofing (IPS), SSH Login Attempts, Brute force Injection attempts, Path Traversal, Detection Evasion, and Forceful Browsing were recorded over a four-day period, the Minister said in a statement issued by Dr Femi Adeluyi, the Minister’s Senior Technical Assistant (Research and Development).

Nigeria cyber attacks: The breakdown

 While a total of 3,834,244 attacks were recorded, the attacks peaked at 1,481,847 on the actual day of the election held Saturday, March 18 across the country, according to the daily monitoring report of the cyber attacks announced today by Pantami.

The daily breakdown of these attacks, Pantami says, originating from both within and outside Nigeria the second top hits came on Friday, March 17 on the eve of the election day, while Sunday March 19 and Monday March 20 recorded 327,718 and 977,783 respectively.    

 According to the statement on the eve of the Presidential and National Assembly elections, the Minister had set up the Ministerial Standing Committee on Advisory Role for the Protection of Nigerian Cyberspace and ICT Infrastructure to beef up security across online Nigeria.

The Committee included monitoring of telecommunication infrastructure for the successful conduct of the 2023 General Elections; developing and implementing plans to enhance the resilience of critical digital infrastructure against cyber threats and designing procedures and using technologies to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber-attacks, as well as developing the ability to quickly recover from any damage that is done. It was also responsible for developing a comprehensive risk assessment, analysing the nation’s current cybersecurity capabilities, and identifying gaps that need to be addressed; and providing professional advice to the Government on the effective utilisation of digital technologies in the conduct of the 2023 General Elections.

“It is interesting to note that the activities of cyber threat actors on the Nigerian cyberspace during the Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections are much lower than those during the Presidential and National Assembly elections. This is neither surprising nor unexpected as, Nigeria being Africa’s largest democracy, the Presidential and National Assembly elections are bound to attract much more attention of everyone, including cyberthreat actors, than during the Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections,” the statement says.