Maputo – Mozambique on Monday said the portal hosting government websites was hit by a cyberattack forcing it to take the system offline for several hours.
He described the attack as “web defacement type”, and a local private-run news website, Carta de Mozambique, said the webpages had been replaced by images associated with the jihadists.
“Portals that publish information for public consumption were attacked,” a senior government official responsible for electronic communications systems Herminio Jasse, told reporters.
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“After the attack we immediately shut down the server. This created some concern from people trying to access the sites,” he said.
Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province has been rocked by a deadly violence waged by militants linked to the so-called Islamic State.
The extremist group has rampaged across towns and villages in northern Mozambique since 2017 with the goal of establishing a hardline caliphate. The unrest has claimed more than 3 700 lives and displaced around 800 000 people.
Since July more than 3 100 soldiers have been deployed from Rwanda and the 16-nation Southern African Development Community to help the Mozambican army smoke out the militants.
The deployment of foreign troops has helped stem the violence, according to global think-tank International Crisis Group.
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Source: AFP
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