Services on the government’s e-Citizen platform have returned to normal after experiencing temporary disruptions caused by an attempted cyber attack.

ICT CS Eliud Owalo confirmed the hackers’ attempt to compromise the system during the week. However, in a subsequent statement, the Ministry of Interior and National Administration assured the public that the platform is now operating optimally.

“We wish to notify the general public that services through the e-Citizen platform have resumed following a regrettable downtime since Sunday, July 23, 2023,” said the ministry.

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“The momentary disruption was caused by an attempted cyber-attack on the platform through Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) technique, which involved flooding the target system with massive traffic from multiple sources simultaneously. The platform was overloaded and rendered unavailable to genuine users thereby causing interference of the services.”

Prof. Kithure Kindiki echoed the earlier statements made by CS Owalo, reassuring the public that sensitive information from the platform had not been accessed by the cybercriminals.

“No data was accessed or lost during the incident, owing to the comprehensive data protection measures put in place by the responsible agencies,” read the statement.

“The attack not only indicates that we are surrounded by malicious actors, both locally and internationally, but also vindicates the government’s relentless pursuit of stronger cyber-security measures to safeguard our Critical Information Infrastructure and data from such threats.”

The Interior Ministry also emphasized the importance of prioritizing and investing in cyber protection for both Kenyans and government/private institutions.