Anonymous cell Anon_0x03 is purported to be behind a series of attacks on Kenyan infrastructure.
Cyber criminals on the prowl are wreaking havoc in Kenya, threatening
to turn the East African country's dream of launching an e-government
into a nightmare.
Hundreds of websites operated by government
ministries and state-level institutions have been cracked, hacked and
defaced in the last two years, with the hackers recording their biggest
haul in January 2012 when an Indonesian intruder Direxer struck down 103
websites in one night.
With over 21 million internet users out of
its 44-million population, Kenya ranks fourth in cybercrime cases in
Africa behind South Africa, Egypt and Algeria, according to latest
statistics by Kaspersky Lab.
The security breaches are boding ill
for Nairobi's quest to become an African tech hub. Kenya has launched a
global charm offensive to woo investors to its US$14.5 billion Konza
Techno City, which has been billed as Africa's Silicon Savannah.
The
attacks by international hacktivist groups - including the notorious
Anonymous, Gaza, TiGER-M@TE and Dz Mafia - have also put the current
government, which pitched itself as a digital player in last year's
elections, to shame. President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William
Ruto have on several occasions claimed to be tech-savvy leaders, and
Kenyatta was recently declared Africa's most followed head of state on
Twitter.
But Latin America-based Anonymous cell Anon_0x03 last
week had a field day hitting at the heart of Kenyatta's administration,
which is grappling with runaway online and offline crime and a
rejuvenated opposition.
On July 21, the group infiltrated Twitter
accounts operated by the Kenya Defence Forces and its spokesman Emmanuel
Chirchir. The hackers also posted an image of the Guy Fawkes mask, a
symbol associated with Anonymous, that anarchists and anti-government
protesters have worn when showing up at physical protests in the US and
around the world.
Three days later, Anon_0x03 hacked and used
Ruto's Twitter account to send abusive messages and publish a list of
government websites it had defaced. A member of the group told Radio
France International (RFI) that it launched the attacks in response to
"a cry for help" to expose corruption. With a score of 27 out of 100,
Transparency International ranks Kenya among most corrupt countries in
the world, at position 136 out of 177.
"Someone asked for help,
and we work for people across the world," the hacktivist told RFI's
English service Friday, adding that they "feel that there is a lot of
corruption," but people "don't pay attention to Africa."
The
hackers' campaign has sent jitters across the country after the
intruders penetrated Web sites with state secrets, and sensitive
security and financial information. They include sites operated by the
Central Bank of Kenya, Department of Immigration and Registration of
Persons, the government's Integrated Financial Management Information
System (IFMIS), Attorney General's office and Kenya Police Service.
Multinational companies that have suffered the sting of the
hacktivists include Google Kenya - whose website, Google.co.ke, was
turned into a music site for hours in April 2013 - commercial banks,
telecommunication and media firms.
The hackers have not been
expressly stating the reasons behind their campaign but a look at their
posts on the affected sites gives clues about their motivations.
After
infiltrating the Kenya military Twitter account on Monday, for
instance, Anon_0x03 posted: "#cartels run Kenya, #sugar, #insecurityKE,
#corruptionKE, #ivorytraffickingKE, #rhinopoachingKE."
A
deteriorating security situation, the rot in Kenya's collapsing sugar
sector and the slaughter of elephants and rhinos for ivory have all been
linked to official corruption. Some ivory hauls seized at the port of
Mombasa and Jomo Kenyatta International Airport have been tied to
powerful people in the current and former regimes.
The hackers
also seemed to oppose Kenya's anti-terror campaign against
al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab in neighbouring Somalia. It posted a message
saying that "violence produces violence" and faulted "spending money on
AK47s"_ messages that ran alongside images of hungry-looking children.
Some
of the attacks seem to be driven less by political than pecuniary
interests. Kenyan commercial banks, for instance, have been losing
millions of dollars to online fraudsters, including hackers, every year.
Afraid of losing customers, many of the affected financial institutions
choose to suffer in silence to the delight of the local and
international online fraudsters.
Cyber security experts have
attributed Kenya's vulnerability to hacking to the use of outdated
operating systems like Windows XP; open source software Joomla, Apache
and MySQL, whose security codes are available online for free; and
pirated software, which has been costing software manufacturers like
Microsoft millions of dollars every year.
Others have linked the
snowballing menace to the government's continued sacrificing of
expertise at the altars of corruption, tribalism, nepotism and
regionalism during recruitment into public service, police and the
military.
The government, for instance, has yet to put out a
firestorm ignited by a recent shambolic police recruitment scandal in
which university graduates in criminology and other disciplines were
left out in favour of high school graduates who had allegedly bribed
their way into police training colleges.
The hackers seem to have
caught the Nairobi regime and Kenya's cybercrime experts on the
backfoot, and the East African economic powerhouse is struggling to
contain the menace before it gets out of hand.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
No comments :
Post a Comment