August 03, (THEWILL) – The National Information Technology Development Agency, NiTDA has raised the alarm over cyber -attack on digital infrastructure in Nigeria by a religiously and politically motivated global hacktivist group.
NiTDA Head of Corporate Affairs and External Relations, Mrs Hadiza Umar, said on Wednesday that the agency’s Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team has detected activities of the group targeting the country’s vital digital infrastructure by “using various attack types, particularly distributed Denial-Of Service, DDOS, attack,”
Based on this discovery, She, “alerts the public to be wary of the occurrence of these attacks which underscores the undeniable and concerning fact that cyber -attacks are not a distant threat but rather a looming danger that resides much closer to us than we may have previously acknowledged.”
She urged public and private institutions to recognize the urgency to take remedial actions to fortify against these malicious digital invasions and secure the safety of critical information and infrastructure as well as halt disruptions of critical services, economic losses, public trust and reputation loss.
“ To guide against attacks targeted at government institutions and other critical sectors, the Agency’s Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team seeks to advise all Ministries, Departments and Agencies including other providers of critical services in the country to ensure the implementation of measures to prevent against DDOS attacks, such as deploying DDOS monitoring systems to watch out for signs of DDOS.”
Other protective measures are, according to her,” minimizing the attack surface area thereby limiting the options for attackers and allowing you to build protections in a single place; implementing or subscribing to DDOS protection features, applications and services to fortify your cyber defenses against disruptive DDOS attacks; ensuring that hosting providers offer abundant Internet connectivity enabling systems to manage significant volumes of traffic effectively and configuring network hardware such as firewall or router to drop incoming ICMP packages of block DNS responses from outside the networks.
Investigation by THEWILL not only confirms Mrs Umar’s alarm and advise but also identify the group called Anonymous Sudan as responsible for targeted attacks on Nigeria.
In social media messages, the group have boasted about their malicious activities in another African country, Kenya and telecommunication giant, MTN.
In one of their revealing messages they stated, “6 hours and counting, we are still putting MTN in our chokehold, thousands of Nigerians complaining about the very poor network from MTN.”
They listed services of the telecom service provider they have disrupted to include ,“Internet, date, calls and sms, customer care panel, recharge line system, App, website, internal infrastructure, full system outage, bank top up and airtime systems.”
Anonymous Sudan, founded on January 18, 2023, declaring, “We will launch attack on any country that is against Sudan, “ is perceived to have religious tendencies following DDOS attacks on developed European countries and institutions such as the February 11, 2023 attack on 26 universities systems in Sweden in retaliation for the burning of the Holy Quran in Stockholm on January 27, 2023. Similarly, Denmark’s 11 airlines were attacked on April 2, 2023 and on March 24 Australian fashion house, ‘Not A Man’s Dream’ fell into their devilish hands. France is also known to be a target for its perceived anti-Islamic actions, as well as Germany. The banks, government, airports and healthcare of these countries have been targeted by Anonymous Sudan for DDOS attacks. So too are India, Israel and the United States.
They claim to have their 25 support groups which include: PHOENIX; Infinity Hackers; Headquarters Scribe; Kill Delta; Killnet Team; Anonymous Russia; Killnet Reserves; MistNet; User Sec; Tuck Hack team; AnonGhost Team; Anon Cyber Vietnam; Ghost Clan; Yours Anon Riots; Saudi Exile; Mysterious Team; Cyber of Garuba; Gano Sec Team; Dragon Force Malaysia Official; Anon Ops United; Anonymous Palestine Freedom; Fighters; AnonOps Revolt 2 and Anon Ops Rise.
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