This afternoon, official government sites have been apparently hacked by a group of dark web hackers.
The cybersecurity breach occurred at midday (3/06/2019) as reports began to surface online that the official sites of government institutions were indeed tampered with. According to reports from I.T experts, the hackers’ collective identifying themselves as KURD Electronic Team carried out the illegal site breach successfully on a series of sites including National Development Implementation and Technical Communication (NDICT) and ICT Authority-run Integrated Financial Mangement Information Systems (IFMIS).
Other websites supposedly hacked by the KURD Electronic team include the National Youth Service site, Kenya Climate Change Knowledge Portal site, and many others.
According to the KURD Electronic team site, their activities include and are not limited to homepage defacement, mass defacement, and IP Address locations. The brazen hackers identified themselves and branded the sites, to ensure they work was unmistakable.
The sites attacked are highly vulnerable due to the information they carry. According to a prior report by Business Today, President Uhuru Kenyatta directed the formation of the National Development Implementation and Communication Cabinet Committee; the National Development Implementation Technical Committee; 8 Regional Development Implementation Co-ordination Committees and 47 County Development Implementation Co-ordination Committees in January; earlier this year. The Fred Matiang’i-led committee was tasked with coordinating the implementation of government programs while providing stakeholder communication and feedback mechanism.
According to a report by Kenyans.co.ke, this is not the first time official government sites have been tampered with. Last year in August 2018, “confidential information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has reportedly leaked after the well known international network of activist and hacktivist identified as ‘Anonymous’ compromised the Ministry’s servers.” The report by a local news outlet reported, “the hacking was conducted under the banner of operation Africa (OpAfrica) which was launched in 2015 against child abuse, child labor and corruption in the African countries.”
In 2017, Standard Media also reported Communication Authority, “the State agency that regulates Internet resources for public and private entities was hacked. The hackers also took down the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) website for several hours casting doubt on the preparedness of Kenyan State agencies to fight cybercrime. ”