Cyber criminals took advantage of the eased COVID-19 restrictions to intensify attacks on personal and business entities in the second quarter between October and December last year.

According to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), 56,206,097 cyber threats were detected during the period, a 59.8% increase from 35,173,937 threats detected in the first quarter.

“This was mainly attributed to the significant increase in Malware, DDoS/Botnet and Web Application attacks recorded during the period. The increase in cyber threat events detected is attributed to the systematic resumption to normalcy amongst sectors and services that were previously dormant due to the restrictions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic,” said the regulator.

Malware still dominate cyber attacks being detected in Kenya as registered the steepest rise at 44.7% as attacks rose to 46,069,525 from 31,842,635 recorded during the first quarter.

CA further detected an 81.5% increase in denial-of-service attacks/botnets which rose to 2,260,036 from 1,245,451 attacks detected in the previous quarter.

Cyber attacks via web application was intense during the quarter under review as threats rose by 281.4% to stand at 7,847,457 from 2,057,369.

However, system vulnerabilities threats detected rose marginally by 2.1% to 29,079.

“In response to the threat events detected, the National KE-CIRT/CC issued 21,513 advisories, which was a 1.0 percent decrease compared to the 21,728 advisories issued in the previous period,” said CA.

CA says during the quarter under review, the National KE-CIRT/CC received 224 investigation related requests as compared to 354 requests in the previous period, which represents a decline of 36.7%.

Increase attacks is also attributed to more businesses migrating online to ensure business continuity amid lockdowns and movement restrictions.

In the period under review, .ke domains rose to 98,544 from 95,101 recorded in the first quarter between July and September.

Total data/Internet subscriptions amounted to 44.4 million subscriptions which comprised 43.8 million wireless subscriptions and 572,982 fixed…