The Kenya ICT Board’s website was brought down on Wednesday joining the list of government sites hacked in less than seven months.
In a post in Twitter, Kenya ICT Board chief executive Paul Kukubo said the website had been hacked but a team of experts was working on it and would soon resume normal operations.
Reports suggest the site resumed operation after about 20 minutes. Efforts to establish the time the site was hacked was however unsuccessful. At 6pm, the site had a notice displaying, ‘maintenance going on and it will be back soon.’
Kukubo remarked that hacking is an international disaster although his organization is working hard to tighten security and reduce such threats.
Late last month, Kenya’s electoral body the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) went down. Although sources from the electoral body brushed aside speculations of hacking, users went on expressing frustrations on social media platforms including Facebook, while some questioned the IEBC’s credibility to conduct the next general elections scheduled for March next year.
Early this year, more than 100 Kenyan government websites, including ministries, departments and local authorities, were hacked by an Indonesian hacker named Direxer.
The ministries of Finance, Immigration, Public Health, Education, Youth Affairs, National Heritage and Roads, Administration Police, Prisons, municipal and county councils were much affected as reported.
E-Government officials were forced to close down the sites to find the cause of the problem while at the same time guard against repeat attacks.
Late last month, the East African countries promised to work together to fight cyber crimes in a forum called the Internet Governance that was held in Nairobi, Kenya.
Kenya’ ministry of information and communications permanent secretary Dr. Bitange Ndemo then said East African countries should jointly come up with ways of tackling cyber crime.
He further challenged the Cyber Security Management Task force directed by Kenya to come up with a solution of dealing with internet-related crimes in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi.
Kenya ICT Board was unveiled on February 19, 2007 by President Mwai Kibaki as a parastatal organization to spearhead ICT use in government agencies.
