Several Kenyan government websites remained inaccessible after a suspected cyberattack on Monday morning. (Photo: Courtesy)
By Daisy Okiring
NAIROBI, Kenya: Multiple Kenyan government websites were rendered inaccessible early Monday following what cybersecurity analysts believe is a coordinated cyberattack, temporarily disrupting access to key public services and raising concerns about the state of national digital security.
A spot check found that websites linked to the Education Ministry, ICT, Health, Labour, Environment, Tourism, State House and Interior Ministry were among the first to go offline. Several of the affected pages were defaced, with attackers replacing official content with extremist statements and coded hate messages.
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Displays of Govt Pages
Pages taken over by the hackers displayed phrases such as “Access denied by PCP,” “We will rise again,” “White power worldwide,” and “14:88 Heil Hitler.”
Cybersecurity experts say the numbers “14” and “88” are widely used in white supremacist circles — with “14” referring to the “14 words” slogan, and “88” representing “HH,” shorthand for “Heil Hitler.”
The appearance of such content has prompted early assessments that the intrusion may have been ideologically motivated rather than financially driven.
Other affected sites included the Immigration Department, the Directorate of Public Private Partnerships, and the Nairobi County web portal. Meanwhile, key ministries such as Defence and the National Treasury remained operational and appear not to have been compromised in the latest wave of attacks.
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Past Breaches
Kenya has faced a growing number of attempted breaches in recent years. Official data shows the country recorded more than 842 million cyber threats in 2025, fuelled in part by increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks and vulnerabilities in aging government systems.
Security analysts warn that widespread outages of public service websites signal a critical need for updated infrastructure, better intrusion detection tools and stronger protocols for monitoring abnormal traffic patterns.
As of publication time, the government had not yet issued a formal statement on the extent of the disruption, the identity of the attackers or measures underway to restore full functionality. ICT officials are expected to brief the media once preliminary investigations are completed.
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