The government of Kenya experienced a significant cyberattack on Monday morning that temporarily disabled several official platforms and defaced ministry pages with explicitly racist content. Hackers replaced the websites of multiple ministries, including those for interior, health, education, energy, labor, and water, with white supremacist messages such as “We will rise again,” “White power worldwide,” and “14:88 Heil Hitler.” This coordinated effort successfully took over numerous government-affiliated platforms, rendering them inaccessible for several hours.
The Interior Ministry of Kenya promptly published a notice confirming the disruption and the temporary inaccessibility of several government websites due to the malicious activity. The ministry stated that preliminary investigations suggest the attack was carried out by a group identifying itself as ‘PCP@Kenya.’ In response to the breach, the government activated its full incident response and recovery procedures immediately, working alongside relevant stakeholders to minimize the damage and restore full access to the affected platforms.
The government confirmed that the situation was successfully contained and that all systems have since been brought back online under continuous monitoring protocols. To aid in the ongoing investigation, the Interior Ministry appealed to the public, urging citizens to share any information they might possess regarding the cyberattack with the country’s incident response team, the National KE-CIRT.
This incident follows closely on the heels of a reported cyberattack in neighboring Somalia, which occurred just one day earlier. Somalia’s Immigration and Citizenship Agency reported a breach of data pertaining to individuals who had traveled to the country via e-Visas. While the agency is currently investigating the incident to determine the total number of people impacted, the U.S. Embassy in Somalia noted allegations from November 11th where hackers claimed to have compromised the e-visa system, potentially exposing the personal data of at least 35,000 people, including possibly thousands of U.S. citizens.
The leaked data from the Somali breach reportedly included sensitive personal details such as visa applicants’ names, photographs, dates and places of birth, email addresses, marital status, and home addresses. Although the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu could not definitively confirm whose data was compromised, it advised that anyone who had applied for a Somali e-visa could potentially be affected. As of Monday afternoon, no hacking group had publicly claimed responsibility for either the Kenya or the Somalia cyber incidents.
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