CS Owalo confirms hack on eCitizen platform

Piece by: BRIAN ORUTA
News

•He said while at it, the state is looking at a long-term solution to future attacks.

• "There was an attack and we are addressing that. We are not just coming up with remedial measures to address the current situation," Owalo said.

Information Communications & The Digital Economy Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo makes his remarks at the 2022 International Conference on Economic Innovation Partnership Programme (EIPP) in South Korea on November 23, 2022.
Information Communications & The Digital Economy Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo makes his remarks at the 2022 International Conference on Economic Innovation Partnership Programme (EIPP) in South Korea on November 23, 2022.

CS ICT and Digital Economy Eliud Owalo has now revealed that the government services portal eCitizen was hacked.

On Thursday, Owalo stated that the administration is now striving to halt the attack.

He also stated that the state is considering a long-term response to future attacks.

"There was an attack and we are addressing that. We are not just coming up with remedial measures to address the current situation," Owalo said.

"We are ensuring that around this digitalisation space, we will build an elaborate risk mitigation framework for purposes of sustainable digitalisation."

The CS assured that during the attack, no data was accessed or lost.

Owalo explained that all the hackers did was slow down the website by putting in unusual requests.

"What they did is they tried jamming the system by making more than ordinary requests into the system," he said.

"It started by slowing down the system, but we were able to address it... No data has been accessed, no data has been lost."

The Cabinet Secretary also affirmed that such attacks will not stop the government's plan to digitise services.

He insisted that a long-term solution is what is needed.

"To me, that is not strange, because cyber attack is predominantly world over... What we need to put in place is an elaborate risk mitigation framework, which we are ready for," the CS said.

Kenyans had complained that they were unable to access government services through the portal, over the past few days.

Most Kenyans encountered errors when they tried to log in.

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