By Staff Reporter
December 24, 2019 (Ezega.com) -- The Ethiopian Information Network and Security Agency (INSA) has foiled multiple terror attacks that were planned against the country by 17 international terror groups, an official has said.
INSA Commissioner-General Demelash Gebermichael in a briefing said 17 members of the terrorist groups also have been apprehended ahead of their planned attacks in joint operations with 30 intelligence organizations of other countries.
ISIS and al-Shabaab were among the radical groups that the agency has accused of launching repeated attacks on selected places of the country.
According to the agency director-general, Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa Jigjiga and Moyale cities were among the prime target places of the planned terror attacks.
He said the agency has shared the security information obtained during this round anti-terror operations with 16 countries, including the United States, Italy, France, India, and some African countries.
The agency said it has also uncovered economic mischief, money laundering, arms trafficking, tax fraud and grand corrupt practices in the country and helped the police to apprehend the perpetrators.
The agency has managed to save billions of birr that could have been lost or embezzled by government officials, the commissioner general added.
The agency will be renamed as National Information Center and would work towards rectifying people’s bad impression towards it, the commissioner said.
Early this month, the intelligence office foiled a cyber hacking attempt by a group of more than 200 hackers on its finance infrastructure.
The cyber-hacking attempt generally called the Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS) was made to immobilize the infrastructure financial institutions in the country.
INSA in a statement said cyber hacking attempt was foiled in a coordinated and prompt response before inflicting heavy damage on Ethiopia's finance infrastructure.
Mid this year, a number of Ethiopian institutions had been affected by a global cyberattack that hit some 155 countries.
The state-run Telecom, industries, and hospitals were few among others affected by the attack.
INSA, a government body tasked to defend threats against the country’s Information Technology (IT) infrastructures, however, didn’t reveal the levels of damage caused to the institutions by the latest cyber attacks.
Last year, INSA introduced counter cyber attack solutions to banks enabling the financial firms to detect threats ahead of the attacks.
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