Hacker Breaks Into NIMC Server, Steals Over Three Million National Identity Numbers Of Nigerians

 

An alleged breach of the National Identity Management Commission server has exposed over three million National Identity Numbers of Nigerians.

 

According to Sahara Reporters, a hacker known as Sam broke into the server and stole vital information belonging to millions of Nigerians.

 

Revealing how easy it was for him to breach the NIMC server and access personal information of millions of Nigerians in an article he shared on infosecwriteups.com, the hacker boasted that he got access to “juice” on the Nigerian Government agency’s server and that he could go ahead to do whatever he desired with other sensitive data at his disposal.

 

Displaying a defaced National Identity card of a Nigerian alongside the article, the hacker said, “I've got one more output for s3 bucket, I casually tried to access it without any hope, and damn! The s3 bucket is full of juice.

 

@St_Gothica while reacting to the issue said, “This is exactly why I never wanted to do the NIN registration. Delayed it as long as I could.”

 

Another Twitter user, @The_Jonathanian, said, “Somebody should tell Sheik Pantami that the most sensitive data of Nigerians under his care have been compromised and floating in the wild.”

 

The hacking of the NIMC server has not only exposed Nigeria’s weak cyber security but also highlighted the danger the country’s residents and investments were currently under.

 

The latest cyber attack comes less than two months after the Nigerian Communications Commission in November 2021 issued a warning that an Iranian hacking group was planning to carry out cyber espionage across Africa.

 

A statement from the agency had further disclosed that the hackers were targeting telecoms, Internet Service Providers, and Ministries of Foreign Affairs in Nigeria and other African countries.

 

The incident also comes months after the President Muhammadu Buhari administration while mandating Nigerians to enroll for National Identification Number claimed that it was going to stop crimes in the country including those perpetrated via the Internet.

 

Speaking during the launch of the National Policy for the Promotion of Indigenous Content in Nigerian Telecoms Sector and Revised National Identity Policy for SIM Cards registration in May 2021, President Buhari said, “The NIN will cover one of the weaknesses in our security structure. We will be able to easily identify and know the personality of Nigerians.

 

Assuring Nigerians of how vital the new system would be to crime fighting in the country, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, in June 2021, claimed that incidents of terror such as banditry and kidnapping in the country had significantly reduced as a result of the insistence by government for persons in Nigeria to register for NIN.

 

Pantami went further to say that the improved database will protect Nigerians more than ever before.

 

But despite those assurances, the latest attack has exposed the failure of the President Buhari administration to protect Nigerians from cyber criminals.

 

Over 60 million Nigerians had so far been captured on the national identity database, according to the NIMC.