Electricity utility firm Kenya Power has reportedly been hacked by a hacker group from Sudan that has targeted critical government websites over the last three days.
Anonymous Sudan on Thursday, July 27, claimed that they had successfully hacked the utility’s systems, disrupting major services.
Newsday can independently confirm that the utility’s electricity tokens system was down, though officials at Kenya Power denied knowledge of the attack.
“Transaction failed, M-PESA cannot complete payment of Ksh100.00 to KPLC PREPAID. The Organization’s system receiving the payment experienced some technical challenges, try again later,” read the message while trying to purchase tokens.
The attack comes after similar ones on other critical infrastructure. Kenya Power officials however denied that their system had been hacked.
“This is not true,” Kenya Power corporate communication officer Immaculate Karambu stated.
The hacker group claimed responsibility for the attack through their Telegram channel, just hours after ICT Secretary Eliud Owalo assured Kenyans over the recent spate of cyber attacks from the Sudanese hacker group.
“Some of our operations, we have attacked the Kenya Power and Lighting Company and we will continue to attack more. Everyone thinks that all our attacks are Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) but we managed to get access to all the backend,” the group posted.
CS Owalo assured Kenyans that while there were attempts to hack government institutions and services including the eCitizen portal, no data had been compromised.
“There is no cause for alarm, we have adequate resources to deal with cases of cyber insecurity,” Owalo assured Kenyans.
The group since Monday, July 24, have claimed attacks on top banks and telcos, leading media outlet and government websites including e-Citizen.
