The federal government has said that 12,988,978 cyberattacks were recorded during the presidential and national assembly elections.

 

Prof. Isa Pantami, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, who made this announcement, stated that on election day alone, more than 6.9 million attacks were reported. 

According to Pantami, the advanced infrastructure used by the various government institutions tasked with guarding the country's cyberspace allowed the attempts to be effectively thwarted. 

The Minister expressed gratitude to President Muhammadu Buhari for creating a climate that allowed government agencies to carry out their duties without interference.

He said;

It is important to note that threat intelligence shows an exponential rise in cyberthreats to Nigerian cyberspace in the months leading up to the 2023 national elections. Threats to open portals and websites typically averaged over 1.550,000 each day. But, on the day of the presidential election, this shot up to 6,997,277.

Many hacking efforts, including Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), email and IPS assaults, SSH login attempts, brute force injection attempts, Ppth traversal, detection evasion, and forcible browsing, were noted during this time.

"All all, 12,988,978 attacks were noted, coming from both inside and outside of Nigeria. It is important to note that the centers effectively stopped these attacks and/or escalated them to the right authorities for proper response.