Pan African Visions

Kenya Confirms Attempted Cyber Attacks On Its Platforms

July 27, 2023

By Samuel Ouma

Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo

Kenya announced on Thursday that hackers have attempted to breach its services over the past one week.

Information, Communication and Digital Economy Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo said the hackers target government and private sectors.

Owalo said the e-Citizen platform, a government portal that houses 5000 services, is the most targeted by cyber attackers and banks.

According to him, the attackers recently attempted to overload e-Citizen through extraordinary requests to clog it; however, they were unsuccessful.

"Over the past one week, there have been unsuccessful cyber attacks attempts targeting both the Government and the Private sectors," said Owalo.

"The e-Citizen Portal Is among the targets of these unsuccessful attacks. The attack on the e-Citizen platform entailed an unsuccessful attempt to overload the system through extraordinary requests, with the Intention of clogging it,but our technical teams blocked the source IP address where the requests were emanating from."

He stated that as a result of the hacking activities, the e- Citizen system has been suffering occasional outages that are slowing down regular access to services on the platform.

He has assured the public that the system is safe and no data has been stolen, saying all government service sites have been secured.

“We want to assure Kenyans that the government has put in place remedial measures to address the current challenge plus a long-term risk mitigation framework to ensure sustainable data privacy and data security,” added Owalo.

Other firms whose systems are allegedly attacked are Kenya Power and Safaricom Mpesa App.

Earlier, Kenya Power directed its customers to use alternative means to purchase tokens. In a statement, the firm said tokens can be bought from banking halls, Airtel Money, and authorized banks.

“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,” read the statement in part.

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