Ghana’s National Information Technology Agency (NITA) announced that as part of the corrective measures of the recent attack on government websites new protocols have been instituted to strengthen information security to forestall any future occurrences of such attacks.
In addition, NITA is currently deploying state-of-the-art security intrusion detection and prevention at the National Primary and Secondary Data Centres, the Director General of NITA, William Tevie has disclosed.
In a press release issued in Accra this evening on the recent attack on the Government of Ghana websites, he assured Ghanaians and the international community that the operational capacity of the National Computer Emergency Response Team-GH was also being strengthened.
Mr Tevie used the opportunity to advise all Ghanaians to immediately carry out audits on their systems, strengthened early warning signals and tighten possible gaps to ensure a safer cyberspace for all internet users in the country.
Accordingly all suspicious online activities are to be reported to the National Computer Emergency Response Team by email at incident@cert-gh.org, he added.
On January, 21, 2015 at approximately 7:10 hours GMT, the CERT-GH of the Ministry of Communications received an incidence report that Ghana Government official website had been defaced.
Mr Tevie said: “Upon further investigation, the team discovered that 11 government websites out of the 58 sites hosted by the National Information Technology Agency were involved.
The team also found out that Ghana was among several other countries including Ukraine, Portugal, UK, Argentina, Mexico, USA, and Vietnam that were hit by the attack from a group called Alsancak Tim TURKISH Hacking Group. In all 53 websites globally were hacked by the Group.”
In line with the mandate as a National CERT to coordinate resolution of computer security incidences with its constituents, the CERT-GH team together with the NITA technical team immediately began the process to contain the attack, he explained.
Mr Tevie was quick to add: “As a first measure, the main web server at the NITA data centre was shut down to avert any further damage from the attack. After forensic investigation of the hacked websites, the team discovered that the attack was from a Turkish based IP address.”
The CERT-GH team and NITA restored the web service within 12 hours. No information was compromised. The integrity of all their backups was not breached, the NITA boss stressed.
According to him, an investigation into the cause of attack revealed certain vulnerabilities which had been addressed.
Mr Tevie acknowledged the role play by the Turkish Ambassador to Ghana and for agreeing on a solution that offered mutual comfort to the two countries.
African Eye News.com
