Hackers Reportedly Break Into NIMC Server, Steal Over Three Million Nigerian NIN

Suspected hackers have allegedly hacked into the server of the National Identity Management Commission NIMC and stolen three million National Identity Numbers of Nigerians.

SaharaReporters reports that the hacker disclosed 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 a website. The report says 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 was said to have written:

“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. I just simply got access to their (Nigeria) data of internal files, users and everything they have. I can download everything, even the whole bucket. I am sure that the bucket is full of juice.

I wanted to look at more files but as we have to follow bug bounty rules I stopped doing more. I’ve got one more s3 bucket with nuclei and it also contained about 4–5 gigs of data.

I’ve rewarded 5250$ for only one report and 0$ for the second one even it contained so much sensitive data”

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. Over 60 million Nigerians have so far been captured on the national identity database. NIMC is yet to react to this development.