In a notable defence of the country’s digital infrastructure, NTC announced that it has successfully prevented two significant cyber-attacks directed at Pakistani government entities, officials briefing the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information Technology disclosed.
Attack Vector & Targeted Systems
According to the briefing:
- One of the intrusion attempts aimed at government communication channels and data flows of federal ministries, attempting to penetrate secure internal networks.
- The second attack was designed to disrupt backbone internet connectivity and routing infrastructure, potentially impacting broad swathes of government services.
- Both incidents were foiled without service disruption for institutions under NTC’s responsibility.
NTC officials revealed the organisation currently supports cybersecurity and hosting services for over 3,000 organisations in about 100 cities across Pakistan.
Significance & Implications
Institutional Resilience
The successful defence underlines the growing maturity of national cyber-security capabilities. The fact that both attacks were stopped before they caused measurable damage suggests robust monitoring, anomaly detection, and rapid incident response within NTC’s network.
Strategic Alert
The scale and ambition of the attacks—targeting both communication channels and core infrastructure—send a clear message: government organisations remain high-value targets for advanced threat actors. The possibility of exfiltration, manipulation of data, or disruption of public services was real. The briefing noted the attacks exhibited features consistent with advanced persistent threat (APT) campaigns.
Policy & Operational Follow-Up
In response, the government is accelerating efforts to establish a dedicated federal cybersecurity authority. During the briefing, NTC confirmed plans to set up such a body to consolidate strategy, oversight and incident-response across the public sector.
Additionally, NTC announced deployment of 30 free Wi-Fi hotspots across Islamabad, expected to go live in December 2025 — a signal that digital expansion continues even as security is being reinforced.
Key Takeaways for Stakeholders
- Government departments and agencies hosting services or data internally or via third-party providers must prioritise real-time monitoring, threat-hunting and segmentation of networks at both application and infrastructure levels.
- Cyber security must now consider infrastructure-layer threats (e.g., routing protocol attacks, backbone connectivity disruptions) not just typical endpoint or application vulnerabilities. The second attack emphasised this point.
- Investment in incident-response capacity, including rapid detection and containment, pays off: the attacks were neutralised before service disruption or data loss was reported.
- The public-sector digital transformation agenda (e-government, citizen services, connectivity) must integrate robust security by design; expansion of services (e.g., free Wi-Fi launch) should go hand-in-hand with strengthened defences.
Pakistan’s ability to repel these two significant cyber-attacks marks a positive milestone—but it also highlights that the threat landscape is escalating. The twin assaults show adversaries are targeting not just applications but the core routing and connectivity infrastructure of state bodies.
For the broader ecosystem (private sector, vendors, critical infrastructure providers) the message is clear: adopt a proactive, layered-defence approach, ensure continuous logging and alerting, and integrate infrastructure-level controls.
As the government moves ahead with forming a central cybersecurity authority, coordination overhead will rise — but the payoff is improved national readiness and deterrent effect. Time will tell whether these developments will shift threat-actor calculus significantly.
