Kenya's Telecom Networks Faced Nearly 47,000 Cyber Attacks in Just Six Months
General
Published: 2026-08-05T15:15:38 · Updated: 2026-08-05T13:15:38Z
Kenya's telecom industry faced 46,786 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks during the first half of 2025, according to NETSCOUT's latest Threat Intelligence Report. That made Kenya the most targeted country in East Africa and the third most targeted in Africa, behind only South Africa and Morocco.
Those attacks averaged about 260 every day.
The report shows one sector absorbed most of the pressure. Wired telecommunications providers recorded 20,349 attacks, while wireless carriers faced another 15,919. Together, they accounted for nearly four out of every five DDoS attacks observed in Kenya during the six-month period.
A DDoS attack overwhelms an online service with traffic until it slows down or becomes unavailable. Unlike a data breach, the goal is disruption rather than stealing information.
Telecom operators sit beneath much of Kenya's digital economy. Mobile money, online banking, ride hailing, e-commerce platforms and countless everyday internet services all depend on those networks remaining available. An attacker doesn't have to break into a system to cause problems. Keeping people from reaching it can be enough.
Attackers are relying on persistence as much as scale. Kenya's largest recorded attack peaked at 78.3 Gbps, relatively modest compared to some of the massive attacks seen globally. Yet the volume never really let up.
NETSCOUT also tracked increasingly sophisticated attacks. The most complex incident recorded against Kenya combined 23 different attack vectors, forcing defenders to respond to multiple techniques at the same time instead of blocking a single flood of traffic.
South Africa recorded more than 213,000 DDoS attacks during the same period, while Morocco ranked second. Across East Africa, communications infrastructure remained one of the most frequently targeted sectors.
Nearly 47,000 attacks in six months is a reminder that some of Kenya's most critical digital infrastructure is being tested almost every hour, even when the public never notices.