NAIROBI Kenya July 27 -One of the pro-Russian hacktivist groups, Anonymous Sudan, carried out an attempted cyberattack on Kenya’s eCitizen platform and other telecommunications and banking sectors, critically affecting their operations.
The attacks, commonly referred to as Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, aim to disrupt websites and other types of Internet properties to make them unavailable for legitimate users by overwhelming them with more traffic than they can handle.
On Thursday, Information, Communication and the Digital Economy Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo however said there have been unsuccessful cyberattack attempts targeting both government and the private sectors.
He however said though there was an attempt on the e-Citizen, it was not hacked.
“The attack on e-Citizen platform entailed an unsuccessful attempt to overload the system through extraordinary requests, with the intention of clogging it. Both the privacy and security of data were not compromised,” he said.
As a result of the attack efforts, the system has been experiencing intermittent interruptions that are affecting the normal speed in accessing services on the platform.
“The relevant Government of Kenya agencies are on high alert and have enhanced the security of e-Citizen portal and all Government sites. All systems and portals under the control of the Government of Kenya are safe,” he added.
The attack affected major government services. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example, has informed all diplomatic missions and international organizations that the attack had impacted processing of e-visa.
“Travelers will be issued visa upon arrival at all entry points to Kenya. The Government also wishes to advise all airlines to on-board travelers destined to Kenya,” MFA said yesterday.
Though the hackers said their attacks were not only DDoS but had also managed to get access to all the backend that belong to Kenyan websites, CS Owalo however assured Kenyans no data was accessed by the hackers.
Anonymous Sudan has claimed responsibility, warning that most Kenyan websites will encounter problems.
“We cannot reveal details of the attack, but we’re certain this attack has harmed their infrastructure a lot and they know this very well,” Anonymous Sudan said.
They went further to list the eCitizen, Safaricom and Kenya Commercial Bank and some of the institutions whose websites had been targeted.
A source from KCB said they were also experiencing connectivity issues affecting Microsoft applications, Electronic Queue Management System (EQMS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Dynatrace, Mpesa API channels, Solarwinds, Subreg, POS, USSD bank transactions, VPN, Mysafaricom and Mpesa app.
Among the institutions and services affected included the Kenya Power tokens purchase, some Safaricom apps including MPESA services, the KCB, and Kenya Power among others.
“We are experiencing a system hitch due to a network breakdown from our service provider. Consequently, some of our services such as the purchase of prepaid tokens through M-Pesa and USSD Code *977# are unavailable,” Kenya Power said on Thursday.
The Diamond Trust Bank (DTB) has also informed its customers that they were experiencing system downtime affecting there MPESA transactions.
According to Owalo, such incidents call for the need for continued digitization of services, and should not hinder the country’s progress in adopting advanced technological solutions.
He said: “We cannot stop digitizing our records and digitalizing our services because we are risk-averse. The Ministry has taken stringent security measures to safeguard the platform from any potential data breaches in the future.”
The government has also formed a multifaceted team responsible for proactively monitoring global security trends to further bolster the country’s cyber defense capabilities.
On July 14, the National Computer and Cybercrimes Coordination Committee (NC4) recommended that all research and education institutions in Kenya be informed to implement necessary cybersecurity measures and share with the director of NC4 on any malicious traffic and incidents.
The NC4 director Evans Ombati informed the Executive Director of Kenya Education Network Trust (KENET) that they had established in the recent past there has been increased and abnormal global internet traffic targeted at several Critical Information Infrastructures (CIIs) in Kenya, aimed at disrupting essential services.
“Telecommunications, banking and education sectors are the most targeted,” Ombati said.
In Africa, the Telecommunications industry remains the most attacked industry for the second consecutive quarter. The Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) industry follows as the second most attacked.
The second quarter of this year 2023 was characterized by thought-out, tailored and persistent waves of DDoS attack campaigns on various fronts.
Some of the attacks included multiple DDoS offensives orchestrated by pro-Russian hacktivist groups REvil, Killnet and Anonymous Sudan against Western interest websites.
Attacks targeting Cryptocurrency companies increased by 600 percent, as a broader 15 percent increase in HTTP DDoS attacks was observed. In an HTTP flood attack, attackers flood a web server with HTTP requests that specifically request pages with large loading volumes.
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