Kenya Government e-Citizen Platform at Hacking Threat

Kenya is on high alert after an attempt to hack the e-Citizen platform. The e-Citizen is a digital payment platform for all government services.

The platform allows for the payment of various services, including the application for national IDs, passports, driving licenses, visas, business permits, tax filing, property transfer, land rent, and marriage certificates. 

On Thursday, following complaints from the public that the platform was not accessible, the National Computer and Cybercrimes Coordination Committee (NC4) said it had established that “increased/abnormal global internet traffic targeted at several CIIs in Kenya aimed at disrupting essential services.”

According to NC4, those targeted were telecommunications, banking, and education Sectors. 

“This traffic constitutes a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack,” NC4 said in a statement.

Anonymous Sudan claimed to have attacked various websites belonging to Kenyan Government organizations as well as public companies.

“Kenyan critical infrastructure has been targeted and will continue to be targeted to teach its arrogant government a lesson to not meddle in Sudanese internal affairs and what Sudan can do to it,” Anonymous Sudan posted on its Telegram Channel.

What is a DDoS Attack?

A DDoS attack, or Distributed Denial of Service attack, is a type of cyberattack where the attacker overwhelms a targeted network making it inaccessible to its users. 

To carry out this malicious act, the attacker uses multiple malware-infected devices, including compromised computers and IoT devices. 

These devices are used to generate a large amount of traffic, which is directed towards the targeted network or service, causing it to become overwhelmed and unable to function properly. 

ICT Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo also confirmed the attack but, said no data was compromised.

“There was a cyber-attack on the eCitizen platform but no data was accessed or lost. We are addressing that, and we are not just coming up with instant remedial measures to address the current situation but are also ensuring that we build an elaborate risk mitigation framework,” said the CS.

“In this instance, they tried jamming the system by making more requests into the system than ordinary, which led to the slowing down of the system.”

“For clarity, both the privacy and security of data were not compromised. The system was not hacked,” he said.