Thursday, January 31, 2019

Is our privacy over technology advancement guaranteed here in africa?

Are Africans who use internet or technological equipments secure?THE REALM OF CYBER SPYING IN AFRICA
Many african governments have resorted to cyber surveillance equipments in trying to tame their opponents or for sovereign security but the employment of these technologies put citzens at a risk of loosing their privacy.
Lets look at some scenerios .
Report identifies some European companies as having supplied Ethiopia with advanced cyber surveillance technology used to target Ethiopians at home and abroad.
According to international reports Ethiopia appears to have acquired FinFisher surveillance software from the United Kingdom and German-based Gamma International – as well as Italy-based Hacking Team’s Remote Control System.
Such tools provide security and intelligence agencies with access to files, information, and activity on the infected target’s computer. They can log keystrokes, passwords, and turn on a webcam or microphone, essentially converting a personal computer into a microphone or other monitoring device.other countries that supply Ethiopia with suveillance equipment and software is china through its ZTE corporation provide the Ethiopian gorvenment with equipment to monitor telecommunications activities.
The tel aviv Company called NICe and the milan base Hacking team company hve been involved in contracts to sell survaillance equipments and software to african states.this software provides interception tools for police and security officers. In july 2018 a group of hackers leaked millions of the two companies emails exposing the companies' secrets explained intheir own words how they used the malware and vulnerability to create a spy Ware that could get nearly into any computer. The hackers exposed that the hacking team company and nice company exchanged nearly 3000 emails with code names used in those mails and it was discovered those two companies were doing busness in uganda,mexico,finland,colombia and israel.
The contracts being discussed would provide those countries with Hacking Team's Remote Control System, which allows governments to use so-called zero days, a unknown vulnerability in software that hackers can exploit to infect the phones of anyone in their country, as well as monitor emails, record keystrokes, and snoop on their phone and computer cameras and microphones.
After the assassination of kashoggi the phone spyware suite called Pegasus has come to the limelight.lets first get to how it works.
To monitor a target, a government operator of Pegasus must convince the target to click on a specially crafted exploit link, which, when clicked, delivers a chain of zero-day exploits to penetrate security features on the phone and installs Pegasus without the user’s knowledge or permission. Once the phone is exploited and Pegasus is installed, it begins contacting the operator’s command and control (C&C) servers to receive and execute operators’ commands, and send back the target’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps. The operator can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity.Suspection of NSO Pegasus infections associated with 33 of the 36 Pegasus operators were identified in 45 countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, the UAE, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zambia.findings are based on country-level geolocation of DNS servers, factors such as VPNs and satellite Internet teleport locations can introduce inaccuracies.Are we safe?
Other countries have been making requests on information about facebook users.The countries involved in these requets of citzens information on facebook include:
Nigeria that made more than 16 requests, botswana 21,Egypt 35,south Africa 33,kenya 8,tunisia5,senegal 9,ivory coast 8,uganda 5
All these requests are made so as to know or curtail some information or data some people share on facebook.
The most profound cyber spying in Africa is done on mobile network operations
For example the gorvenment of Senegal asked orange for data of up to 30000 customers and cameroon is the worst in Africa holding over half of all data request of telecommunications customers. The countries in africa you have to fear the most when using a mobile phone are Nigeria and Cameroon.

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