As Nigeria prepares for the presidential election scheduled for Saturday, 16 February, Deloitte Nigeria has warned that there may be spike in the number of politically motivated cyber-attacks.
The global audit firm disclosed this in its latest Nigeria Cyber Security Outlook 2019 report.
On March 2015, just minutes to accreditation or voters during the presidential election, the website of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was hacked by a group of persons that called themselves Nigerian Cyber Army. The incidence sparked heated accusations between the camps of the two leading parties.
“Hackitivism may be prevalent before and immediately after the elections in order to gain access to the IT systems of government agencies and parastatals,” Tope Aladenusi, partner Risk Advisory and the author of the report said.
He further noted that the trend will take a new dimension and if left unchecked may pose a threat to future elections as witnessed around the world.
“We recommend that the necessary authorities be vigilant in order to protect critical technology platforms,” Aladenusi said.
With the elections just a few days away, IT experts have expressed concerns over attempts from political parties to use online platforms to influence voting outcomes. In 2015, Cambridge Analytica was reported to have attempted to use fake online videos to cast aspersions and discredit an opposition candidate.
On the prompting of an unnamed Nigerian billionaire, the data mining firm hacked Facebook to harvest the profile of millions of users and target what was determined to be their worst fears. In one of the videos the firm produced, people were filmed being dismembered, having their throats cut and bled to death, and also burned to death in a bid to portray Muslims as violent and Buhari as the man that will impose Sharia Law that will make that sort of violence commonplace in the country.
Following that incidence, Facebook in January 2019 announced it will not accept political advertisement, temporarily, from outside Nigeria and would also roll out new rules to prevent “foreign interference” around the polls.
“By shining a light on political ads, news organisations, regulators, watchdog groups and people anywhere in the world can hold advertisers and us more accountable,” the company wrote in a blog post.
