The Government of Kenya has experienced one of the biggest villain cyberattacks that have crippled activities on seventeen websites operated by ministries and parastatals.
Cybercriminals referring to themselves as ‘Kurd Electronic Team’ have been more fearless than your average crooks.
After taking control of the sites’ servers, the criminals defaced the websites and uploaded their own logo on the homepages of the seventeen websites that were under attack.
Some of the major websites whose operations were halted are The National Development Implementation and Technical Communication (NDICT), National Youth Service (NYS), National Environment Management Authority (Nema) and ICT Authority-run Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (IFMIS).
“We’ll be back soon! Sorry for the inconvenience but we’re performing some maintenance at the moment. If you need to you can always contact us, otherwise we’ll be back online shortly! GoK Cyber Security Team,” that is the message appears when one attempts to log into any of the websites.
READ MORE
Two ex-NYS staff jailed over loss of Sh791 million
NYS officials to be jailed over NYS Sh791 m scandal
How African varsities can fortify defences against cyberattacks
The effect of the cyberattack has not been fully established by authorities but observations show that the attackers managed to conduct mass defacement, IP Address deallocations, and could have exposed regulated information.
The government is yet to issue a statement on the cyberattack, and our attempts to reach out (on phone) to Ministry of ICT PS Jerome Ochieng were futile as our calls went unanswered.
Kenyan government websites have previously attacked by unknown cybercriminals. Most of the government’s related websites are currently hosted by Kenya ICT Authority under one server.
Cybercriminal have previously targeted Kenya Defence Forces’ site, Deputy President William Ruto’s site as well as Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) website that was hacked in 2017 by a group calling itself AnonPlus.?
