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South Sudanese hacker celebrate after Mpesa and KPLC tokens got hacked.
Anonymous Sudan on Thursday, July 27, claimed that they had successfully hacked the utility’s systems, disrupting major services.
Kenyans.co.ke independently confirmed 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.
In a statement on Thursday, July 27, Kenya Power asked their clients to purchase tokens through their banking halls, Airtel Money, and authorised banks as the issue is resolved.
“We are working with our service provider to restore the affected services as soon as possible. We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused.”
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. A KPLC customer trying to pay earlier got this response: “Transaction failed, M-PESA cannot complete payment of Sh 2000.00 to KPLC PREPAID. The Organization’s system receiving the payment experienced some technical challenges, try again later.”
The government’s eCitizen platform also experienced downtime on Thursday.
ICT Cabinet Secretary Eluid Owalo, during an interview with Spice FM, confirmed that the eCitizen platform was indeed hacked.
“Yes, the eCitizen platform was hacked and we are addressing it. They tried jamming the system by making more than ordinary requests to the system. However, no data has been accessed or lost,” stated Owalo.
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