Analysing Kenya’s cyber attack in five charts

Cyber-attack risk becomes more real as more services become digital and software continues eating the world in line with Marc Andressen’s observation.

Kenya had a first-hand experience of this as July came to a close. During the week commencing 24 July, Kenyans found that they could not access some critical public and private services and products due to a cyber attack that made them unavailable.

The attack, a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), was claimed by Anonymous Sudan—a religious and politically motivated group of activist hackers allegedly from Sudan.

Side note: A DDoS is a hostile attempt to overwhelm the regular traffic of a network by generating a flood of traffic that slows down the service, preventing it from catering to legitimate requests. Think of it as a political parade cutting off traffic during rush hour on a Monday morning.

The attack targeted Kenya’s single access point for government services.