Category: Security
ZRP And HIT Strike Partnership To Lower Crime Rates
Zimbabwe’s police force (ZRP) has come to an agreement with the Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) to develop staff and enable the police force to deal with crime more efficiently using technology. Apart from staff development, the agreement signed last week will also factor in some software. The Deputy Commissioner-General, Stephen Mutambi expressed worry over […]
Windows 7 Users Are Left With One Year Before The OS Self Destructs
Ok, that headline is louder than it needs to be. But seriously, if you are still using Windows 7, now might be as good a time as any to know that support for the ageing OS is ending in a year’s time. That makes the software a ticking time bomb… Microsoft is ending support for […]
Social Media In Zimbabwe Now Inaccesible To Those With VPNs As Well
Internet access has been restored but it seems the lockdown on social media is still going strong and though earlier you could access the social media sites along with YouTube and WhatsApp if you had a VPN installed it seems that government has taken things further by blocking most VPNs as well which means most […]
Here’s How To Continue Online If The Zimbabwe Government Shuts Down The Internet
Of course this will only be helpful if they do a soft shut down of the internet (in simple terms by using software to keep you from connecting). It’s madness if the government even considers shutting down the internet as some reports suggest and it will be full blown lunacy if they do it the […]
ZRP Says They Are Far From Ready To Fight Cyber-Crime
2018 has been the year of card cloning. With Zimbabwe’s rapid acceleration to ‘cash-less economy’ status the amount of cyber-crime that has come with this cashless-ness has been a clear indicator of the fact that the government did not deliberately plan for a digital economy but instead stumbled upon one. “Our hands are tied” ZRP […]
Ditch Your Password & Unlock Gmail Using Your Phone Instead
I mean keeping track of your passwords is a serious chore. Especially when you have signed up for so many different services. Instead of just having one password you might have resorted to services such as LastPass to manage your passwords but if your experience is anything like mine then even that isn’t too perfect. […]
There Have Been 154 Cases Of Card Cloning In Zimbabwe So Far In 2018
Card cloning has slowly become a phenomenon for most of 2018. The cyber-crimes are on a rise and because the public was never prepared to actually safeguard themselves criminals are making a killing. The Zimbabwe Information and Communication Technologies (ZICT) has said in 2018 there have been 154 cases of bank card cloning reported. The […]
Facebook Accounts Being Hijacked: Here’s How To Protect Yourself
There’s been a recent trend on Facebook, and if you don’t like missing out you might have just been the victim of a clever browser hijacking tactic. Here’s how you can avoid the problem if you haven’t been caught in the crossfire and if you have here’s how to cleanse yourself of this cancer. How It […]
Mnangagwa’s Govt Getting Facial Recognition Tech From China
The Zimbabwean Government is believed to be importing a mass facial recognition system, Cloudwalk Technology, as they look to ramp up security efforts. The system is being imported as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Belt and Road Initiative is a is a development strategy proposed by the Chinese government that focuses on […]
Was Mugabe Hacked Out Of Office? Spoke To Most Popular Hackers In The World And They Kinda Think They Played A Part
So when we spoke to Anonymous, we didn’t think they would mention of all things our coup-not-coup but they did. Is there any chance they played a role in Bob’s demise? For the uninitiated, Anonymous is a decentralized international ‘hacktivist group’ that is widely known for its various DDOS cyberattacks against several governments. You may […]
‘Swipe’ Crimes On The Rise: Here’s How To Stay Safe
The use of debit cards in Zimbabwe has been gradually increasing over the years, spurred on by our cash crisis. One of the advantaged of migrating to a cashless society is that we are less vulnerable to having our hard cash stolen from us. Unfortunately, new technologies come with new risks. I think it may […]
Are Huawei & ZTE Really Spying On Consumers And Should You Be Afraid?
After US government officials, NSA and FBI warned consumers to desist from purchasing devices from Huawei and ZTE, you might have been interested in purchasing or already owning a device from either and now you are unsure if you should… ‘Do not be afraid…’ Here is why you should go ahead and buy that Huawei […]
We underestimated Cybercrime in Zimbabwe, it’s time to be woke now…
The appointment of a fully-fledged Minister of Cyber Security, Threat Detection and Mitigation was met with a lot of scepticism. This was mainly driven by the perceived duplication of responsibilities among ministries, and also by the lack of public understanding of the real threat cybercrime poses. Such a perception threatens to downplay one of the […]
Everyone is now feeling uneasy on the internet. No worries, here’s how to Protect and Free yourself
The internet has always been about transcending boundaries and providing unfettered access to information in ways that traditional media and information sources such as libraries could not. For the most part, this has remained true. A person in Zimbabwe can read the New York Times as soon as article is published, we can use Skype […]
Facebook says upload nude pictures of yourself if you don’t want your nude pictures posted online
Facebook has come up with a solution to tackle revenge porn that seems crazy and counter-intuitive at first but once you settle down you begin to see how it could work. What is revenge pornography? The posting of revealing or sexually explicit images or videos of a person on the Internet without their consent where people […]
The Government confirms Cyber Security Ministry is focused on social media
The Presidential spokesperson Mr George Charamba spoke on behalf of the president in a bid to clarify what the role of the new Cyber Security, Threat Detection and Mitigation ministry was all about. Quite disappointing if you ask me. When the cabinet was reshuffled on Monday and we saw the new ministry and naturally people […]
We Have a New Minister of Cyber Security in Zimbabwe: Big Brother is watching…
So actually the full title is Minister of Cyber Security, Threat Detection and Mitigation and he is non other than the outgoing Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Hon Patrick Chinamasa MP. This is an interesting one. President Robert Mugabe has mixed and matched his cabinet again today. As we expected there were not so […]
Surprisingly, Zimbabwean government not requesting user information from Facebook and Google
Back in 2009 Google became the first internet company to publish a transparency report and since then many other internet companies have followed suit. These reports detail information on government requests for user data, content removal and to what extent the internet companies complied with those requests. This leads to better understanding of censorship and […]
PETYA: Another world wide cyber attack….and it’s spreading
Image credit Pixabay The WannaCry ransomware attack seems to have triggered a lot of cybercrime around the world – including in Zimbabwe. We notice how since then we’ve been hearing of ransomware attacks every now and again. Frankly speaking, it’s beginning to sound like some cybercrime movie but only less exciting since this time no-one is safe […]
What do you do if you think your website has been hacked
Earlier, we talked about ways to secure a website against hacking. If you read that post, you’d see that it was more focused on preventing hacking than recovering from hacking. So what do you do if you think your website has been hacked and how can you regain control. Let’s take a look. Don’t panic […]
Harare Institute of Technology allegedly hit with cyber attack
Today, on whatsapp a screenshot with the Harare Institute of Technology website being shown as hacked started circulating. We tried to open the website to see the same thing as was in the picture but it failed to load. Chances are that the website has been taken down by HIT if they’ve found out what […]
Your WiFi bundles running out too soon? Your WiFi security might be killing you
Most if not all households or companies with WiFi installed be it ADSL or Fiber make use of security keys to prevent unauthorized users from consuming their data and congesting their bandwidth. This method for most of the part is holding up fine. However technology is ever advancing and the older the tech you are […]
OK Zimbabwe the latest victim of cybercrime
OK Zimbabwe suffered a $70 000 hit in their finances after Isaiah Marange, a 33 year old man from Chitungwiza hacked into OK’s Money Wave system. According to The Herald, Marange signed up and opened a Money Wave account making an initial deposit of $5 under the name Kundai Liberty Musamba. On 26 December 2016 […]
SSL cetificate authority Let’s Encrypt issues over 20 million certificates – here’s why their work’s a big deal
A year ago if you wanted a simple SSL certificate for your site or application you had to part with your hard earned dollars to get it. Granted that the cash shortages were still not known to most of us, liquidity was already a problem. On 12 April last year Let’s Encrypt changed all that. […]
Zimbabwean websites are not secure, banned from receiving security certificates (SSL)
Zimbabwean individuals and business entities are now banned by the Certification Authority Browser Forum from receiving Extended Validation SSL, Organization Validation (OV), and Domain Validation (DV) certificates . SSL is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and […]
Zimbabwe is the world champion of pirating software
According to the recently-released BSA Global Software study, Zimbabwe has the highest percentage of pirated software on the planet. Zimbabwe climbs to the top of the survey’s infamous log for the first time, having been in the top 5 since 2009. The study, whose findings span the globe and have made news in countries on […]
Essential tips to secure your home internet connection
In the course of using my internet connection I discovered that my home internet connection was very insecure because my ISP had not bothered to secure it. This is a warning on how your internet connection might not be as safe as you think and what you need to do to protect yourself.