Hackers briefly disabled the official website of Kenyan President William Ruto on July 18, demanded a ransom of five bitcoins and threatened to leak unspecified data if not paid.
Key Takeaways
Hackers defaced President Ruto’s website on Saturday, demanding 5 bitcoins to prevent a data leak.The threat underscores why NC4 tracked billions of digital attacks on Kenya’s system early this year.NC4 and State House teams are now running a forensic probe to find where security perimeters failed.William Kabogo, the cabinet secretary for the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy, confirmed that the government’s ICT Authority immediately activated cybersecurity response protocols. Authorities temporarily restricted public access to the portal to contain the issue and allow for a forensic investigation.
State House officials confirmed their technical teams were working alongside the National Computer and Cybercrime Coordination Committee (NC4) and outside technical partners to restore the page and determine how the security perimeter was breached.
This incident marks the second high-profile cyberattack on Kenyan state infrastructure within a year. In November 2025, a coordinated attack briefly compromised several ministry websites, sparking heightened scrutiny over the resilience of the East African nation’s expanding digital public services.
A recent NC4 report noted that Kenya’s critical infrastructure and government systems faced billions of cyber threats over three months earlier this year, prompting ongoing efforts to standardize cybercrime investigations nationwide. At the time of writing (July 18, 1.51 p.m. EST), the website was still down.
