Nigeria’s Premium Times news website was hit by a cyber-attack over the weekend, leaving many readers and internet users confused as to why they couldn’t access the website.
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Nigeria’s Premium Times news website was hit by a cyber-attack over the weekend |
“Visitors to the Premium Times site struggled in vain early Sunday January 5 to access our news platform, premiumtimesng.com. The one-word report that the site had been “blocked” was the depressing information, which alerted them that we had come under a ferocious and hostile cyber-attack, a process, which actually started Friday January 3,” the site said in a statement.
The website explains that they were able to perform the necessary recovery procedures, which lasted almost 9 hours. “After a drenching 9-hour recovery operation which brought together wonderful minds across three continents, we were finally able to restore hope and keep the site alive again. We thank thousands of worried readers and colleagues who saw the vivid outlines of a nefarious and sponsored plot against the media and free expression in this onslaught directed at Premium Times.”
Editor in Chief of Premium Times, Dapo Olorunyomi, said “we may have succeeded in fending off the wild wolves for a while, but it is typical and in the nature of the beast to return in greed.”
“What is at stake is not the publishing rights of a newspaper but the fate of democracy, an accountable polity, and the possibility of an open and transparent society” Olorunyomi said, urging Nigerians to sacrifice all they have to retain an independent, pluralist, and ethical media.
