Summary: Just 24 hours after the Digital Census went live, the primary data collection portal has faced a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack dubbed “Operation NullCount.” Traffic volume peaked at 4.2 Tbps, reportedly originating from a botnet of compromised IoT cameras and legacy routers in the APAC region.
Business Impact: Service degradation for millions of citizens. While no data was breached, the outage has fueled disinformation campaigns questioning the integrity of the census process. For government contractors, this underscores the fragility of public-facing infrastructure during high-visibility events.
Why It Happened: Hacktivist groups, likely state-aligned, timed the attack for maximum psychological impact, exploiting the known launch window to undermine public trust in government digital transformation.
Recommended Executive Action: If you manage critical public infrastructure, ensure “DDoS Mitigation” is set to “Always On” rather than “On Demand” during launch windows. Verify that your CDN (Content Delivery Network) has sufficient burst capacity.
Hashtags: #Census2026 #DDoS #NullCount #CyberWarfare #InfrastructureSecurity #PublicTrust