Erroneous Update Of Profile On Kenya Railways Facebook Page Raises Eyebrows

• A stranger's photo was briefly uploaded on the Kenya Railways Facebook page as its main display photo on Thursday, July 27
• Some quarters alleged this was a result of hacking, given some other crucial government online platforms had also been subjected to cyber attacks
• This publication however established that the upload might have been an erroneous one as the photo in question can be traced to a post done by the corporation on May 12

Nairobi - The Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) moved with speed to reverse an erroneous change to its Facebook profile.

Some quarters alleged that a social media user had uploaded his photo as the corporation's profile before the team managing the page intercepted and made changes in good time.

TUKO.co.ke established that the upload might have been an erroneous one, given that the photo exists in the page's gallery.

The photo is of a suspect accused of vandalising the corporation's infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the railway corporation announced disruption in ticketing due to a technical hitch compounded by network challenges.

Passengers boarding the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) were urged to put up with the inconvenience as efforts were underway to restore things.

"We are experiencing a system hitch affecting the purchase of tickets by customers. This is due to an outage on our service provider's network. We are working with the service provider to restore normalcy as soon as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience caused," the corporation.

A spree of cyber attacks on government platforms were reported on the same day.

The E-Citizen platform was hacked barely a month after the government onboarded over 5,000 services, ICT CS Eliud Owalo confirmed.

Owalo said it is an inevitable trend in the changing technological world, adding that cyber-attacks are predominant globally.

Was E-Citizen data breached by hackers?

The CS assured that no data was accessed, reiterating that the government will continue with its digital plan despite such risks.

"That is not strange to me because cyber attack is predominant the world over. We cannot stop digitising our records and services because we are risk averse," said Owalo.

Owalo noted that the government was setting up an elaborate risk mitigation framework to deal with the attack and related risks in the future.

He said this will lead to sustainable digitalisation, which is part of President William Ruto's key government agenda.

How E-Citizen was hacked

Owalo revealed that the cyber attackers did not access any data from the platform but tried to overcrowd it with many requests, leading to the service breakdown.

He added that the government ensures data privacy and security through the Data Commissioner's office.

"They tried jamming the system by making more than ordinary requests. This slowed down the system, but we addressed the issue and no data has been accessed or lost.

"We have established and operationalised the office of the data commissioner anchored on the law to ensure the data privacy and security mandate is well executed," he said.

As part of the remedial measures to curb cyber security, the government formed a multifaceted team responsible for proactively monitoring global cyber security trends.