In a statement, the ministry of interior and national coordination said Kenyans can now access over 5,000 services offered on the platform.”We wish to notify the general public that services through the e-Citizen platform (ecitizen.go.ke) have resumed following a regrettable downtime since Sunday, July 23, 2023,” the ministry stated,
Capital FM reported that the government explained that an attempted cyberattack overwhelmed the system and rendered it inaccessible to users.”It involved flooding the target system with massive traffic from multiple sources simultaneously,” the Interior Ministry revealed.ICT Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo assured that no data was accessed, reiterating that the government will continue with its digital plan despite such risks.
“That is not strange to me because the cyber attack is predominant worldwide. We cannot stop digitising our records and services because we are risk averse,” said Owalo during an interview with a local radio station, Spice FM, on Thursday, July 27.
Owalo noted that the government was setting up an elaborate risk mitigation framework to deal with the attack and related risks in the future. He said this will lead to sustainable digitalisation, part of President William Ruto’s key government agenda.
Anonymous Sudan, a pro-Russian hacktivist, claimed responsibility and warned Kenyans to brace for more disruption of services.”Most Kenyan websites will encounter problems. We cannot reveal the details of the attack, but we are certain this attack has harmed their infrastructure a lot, and they know this very well,” the hacker tweeted.
