Kabarak University said on Tuesday that it had reclaimed control of its Facebook page after a hacker took it over over the weekend and began publishing malicious posts.

Vice-Chancellor Henry Kiplangat stated that the page was retrieved through a collaborative effort between the university's cyber security staff and professionals from Facebook's parent company, Meta.

In a statement, Prof Kiplangat said that The team worked tirelessly and deployed a wide range of cyber security measures to recover the hijacked Facebook account as soon as possible.

He said the attack "posed an imminent risk of loss of trust from partners and the general public," and that the institution had opted to conduct cybersecurity training in collaboration with Meta.

On Sunday, the hacker commented on the page, which has over 75,000 followers, that they were "just having fun" and that the college had to pay $500 (Ksh.68,000) to restore access to the page.

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PHOTO | COURTESY Kabarak university

"I will not return this account, but I challenge all of you to reclaim this account immediately-regards a student from one of Jakarta's IT-based high schools," part of the post said.

They still maintained the Kabarak University moniker but had altered the profile picture to a self-portrait of an Asian man by this point.

The Facebook went viral on Tuesday when photographs of local politicians were posted with amusing remarks.

PHOTO | COURTESY  kabarak university

The hacker typed "Naibu rice" under a photo of Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, prompting Kenyans to question whether the person behind the tweets was from Indonesia, where Jakarta is located, or just another Kenyan.

Kabarak had restored the page's profile photo to the official university emblem and removed the hacker's posts as of Wednesday.