Category Posts: Security

The term “piracy” implies that the wide availability of unauthorized copies of copyrighted content is the result of bad actors preying on the legitimate market. But history teaches us that it is primarily a result of market failure, the unwillingness or inability of existing companies to provide their product at a price or in a manner that potential customers want.

Earlier this month, professional services firm Ernst & Young released its annual Global Information Security Survey report, this year titled “Into the cloud, out of the fog”. Zimbabwe is part of 52 countries where 1,700 IT leaders were surveyed across all industry sectors. Along with the global report, the local member firm released country specific findings compared side by side with the global survey results. You can download the local report here.

I had always heard/read about the exponential growth of Facebook users over the past couple of years, but it really didn’t quite sink in. The problem was I was seeing the same old faces I knew and a few surprises here and there, so much that it got to a point where I wasn’t really motivated to log on. So I took a break. Now, upon coming back a few months ago, I really experienced that growth.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are now considered the cornerstone of every economy, transforming the way business is done while significantly impacting governments and communities. ICTs have contributed to the rapid development and reformation of economies while enhancing productivity and remodelling the flow of capital.

The Daily News website is down. Again. Why they pulled it down is anyone’s guess right now. SW Radio Africa reported yesterday that the editor of the paper, Stanley Gama, had told them the website had been restored online yesterday after a month of downtime. The reason for the downtime given by the editor is that they are “making further developments and modernising in line with modern websites around the world”.

Barely a day after we posted that the NewsDay was down, we got notified on Twitter that HMetro (www.hmetrozim.com) was suffering a similar problem. The website has been hijacked by hackers.

Here’s what you see if you open the H-Metro website right now:

Soon after we posted that Alpha Media’s Newsday website was down this morning, a friend notified us there was something wrong with our website. We checked and sure enough all the articles were gone. No story at all, like it’s a new blog.

We received a tip this morning that the NewsDay website, www.newsday.co.zw, may have been hacked. Web browsers currently report that malware (malicious software) has been detected on the site and that visitors are at risk of malware infection if they open the website.

The website of one of Zimbabwe’s most read daily newspapers, The Daily News, is down. We’re told by a reader that the website has been this way since at least yesterday morning. Currently, opening the www.dailynews.co.zw address loads a ‘403 Forbidden’ page served by the web hosting company.

While sitting at a coffee shop across the street from a large Bank, a person pulls out their laptop, hacks the (secure) Wi-Fi network of the bank, and by their 3rd cup of coffee has access to a desktop computer in the bank with full local access. Sounds far-fetched? Think again. That person is now writing this article. Thankfully the entity in question had requested this test to occur, but it does highlight a very important topic for discussion: African countries are growing in ICT, fast. Are they ready for the attention they will attract from hacking syndicates and cyber criminals?

Yesterday, we posted that the South African government was considering allowing the police access to the BlackBerry encrypted messenger service (BBM) in their operations to catch criminals. The article was based on reports that the South African deputy communications minister, Obed Bapela, had said BBM posed a security risk that the government needed to “address with urgency”. The deputy minister said that the SA government wants to review BBM.

Reports coming out of South Africa yesterday suggest the country’s government is apprehensive about BlackBerry services. The South African government is proposing allowing the police access to the BlackBerry encrypted messenger service supposedly in a bid to help catch criminals.

We have a Question & Answer platform here on Techzim, where visitors can post tech-related questions and get answers from the community. We try to be there a lot posting answers as well, but we don’t know everything, so it’s really the Zimbabwe tech community (thank you guys, macd, TechGuru, FREEWORLD and all you anonymous fellows!) driving the platform.

Checking the site today, I was met with the question “any legal issues with selling pirated software(.e.g. Say from torrents)?

In the past few years we have seen major developments in the availability and growth of high speed internet services in Zimbabwe. Such developments are a characteristic of the modern information and global economic age. At the same time such developments have led to the massive development and production of all kinds of software (Web Apps, Mobile Apps, etc.) to support and enable the organisations to carry out business over the internet.

On Saturday, we posted information revealing that the hacking of the ZSE website that happened last week was at the application level. We have since received more details of the hacking incident itself and it appears the ZSE website was used by the hackers to host viruses and a phishing website.