Kenya’s National Cyber Security Centre detected over 1.2 billion cyber threat events between October to December last year, representing a staggering 943.01 per cent jump from the preceding period.
- According to Quarter One Report of the Financial Year 2023/2024, Communication Authority of Kenya said 7,514,964 Malware was detected with 156,982 advisories issued.
- Web application attacks detected was at 106,603 while advisories issued was at 1,755,467.
- Mobile application attacks detected within the same period was at 27,147 and 7,193 advisories issued.
The Centre issued over eight million advisories to various actors within the critical infrastructure ecosystem, warning them of the impending attacks and guiding them on what remedies they should institute.
The government attributes the huge spike in cyber threat events to enhancement of cyber threat monitoring capabilities and the increased exploitation of “system vulnerabilities” fuelled by increased deployment and use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
“Looking at the top targeted industries, namely Internet Service Providers (ISPs), cloud service providers, government and the education sector, the probable impact on the economy in the event of any successful cyber-attacks would be enormous,” Edward Kisiangani, Principal Secretary Broadcasting & Telecommunications, Ministry of Information, Communications and The Digital Economy said.
- DDOS detected stood at 5,101,538 and advisories issued on the same was at 584,166.
- Digital investigations advisories was at 301 while Digital forensics at 81.
- In July, attackers targeting private sector and the public service unsuccessfully gained access to government services portals.
The attack on Government websites was an unsuccessful attempt to overload the systems through extraordinary requests, with intention of clogging it. Over 5000 government services from 100 plus ministries, counties, departments and agencies available on the e-citizen platform were not accesible due to the attack.
Utility Services Provider, Kenya Power issued a statement in regard to the disruption of its services. The company said it was experiencing a system failure due to a network breakdown at its service provider.
Safaricom also experienced similar disruption on its services such as Lipa na Mpesa, Mshwari, Bank to Mpesa service.
Kenya Heightens Surveillance Over Cyber Attack Attempts – Kenyan Wallstreet
