Interior CS Kithure Kindiki says e-Citizen was hit with massive DDoS attack

Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

Interior Cabinet Secretary Professor Kithure Kindiki says the e-Citizen mobile application was intentionally flooded with traffic, making it unavailable to genuine users.

In a statement released on Thursday evening minutes after his ICT counterpart Eliud Owalo clarified the extent of the alleged cyber-attack, CS Kindiki maintained that no data was breached and that e-Citizen services have resumed following a downtime since Sunday, July 23, 2023.

"Our Cybersecurity Response Team has since established that the momentary disruption was caused by an attempted cyberattack on the platform through Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) technique, which involved flooding the target system with massive traffic from multiple sources simultaneously. Consequently, the platform was overloaded and rendered unavailable to genuine users thereby causing interference of the services," Kindiki's statement read in part.

The CS blamed what he termed as 'agents of crime' for 'distracting the state from the milestones it has made in the digital space so far'.

"However, no data was accessed or lost during the incident, owing to the comprehensive data protection measures put in place by the responsible agencies. "All members of the public, businesses, government institutions, and private entities are advised to enhance their cybersecurity preparedness and prioritize cybersecurity as part of the collective responsibility to ensure a safe cyber environment in the country," said Kindiki.

According to CS Owalo, the cyber-attacks on e-Citizen platform for the past week were unsuccessful. However, he assured Kenyans of data security and return to normal access speed.

At the same time, Kenya Railways Managing Director's office gave notice on its official social media platforms on Thursday evening that its systems were also experiencing a technical hitch.

The hitch had affected the purchase of tickets and efforts to restore normalcy are underway, Kenya Railways says.