Kabogo: No sensitive data accessed after President's website hack

State House Nairobi. [File,Standard]

The government has confirmed hackers took over the President's official website on Saturday, defacing its homepage and demanding a Sh41.3 million ransom.

The attackers, who demanded five bitcoins, threatened to leak unspecified information if the payment was not made by 6 p.m.

Visitors to president.go.ke were met with a message reading, "This message is the third time for you before we leak everything about you," and demanding payment "if you want peace before 6 o'clock this evening," said the defaced page.

The Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy confirmed the breach in a statement, saying the ICT Authority activated established incident response protocols immediately after detecting the intrusion.

"There is no evidence of unauthorised access to sensitive data," noted Cabinet Secretary William Kabogo.

Officials temporarily restricted access to the website as a precaution, allowing technical teams to contain the breach, carry out forensic analysis and begin restoration work, according to the ministry.

The ministry did not disclose when the incident occurred or provide details on the nature of the attack.

By the time of publication, visitors to the site were greeted with a maintenance message stating the site would return shortly.

Saturday's breach is not the first to hit government infrastructure.

In November 2025, government agencies suffered a coordinated attack in which a Sudanese hacker group later claimed responsibility, saying it had taken down several Kenyan websites, including e-Citizen, to protest alleged Kenyan interference in Sudan's affairs.

The November attack also hit the presidency's website along with those of the ministries of Interior, Energy, Labour, Health and Education, and was blamed on a group calling itself PCP@Kenya, according to Interior Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo.

Some of the defaced pages in that attack displayed neo-Nazi and white supremacist propaganda, raising concerns beyond a typical cyberattack.