CYBER ESPIONAGE: HOW SAFE IS OUR CYBER SPACE?
Many Nigerian businesses have gone online! From internet banking to virtual world connection, our lives have been made easier via the World Wide Web. Like the advantage of a fast air travel with the disadvantage of a dangerous air crash, the information super high way has enhanced knowledge, facilitate business transactions and put more money in to people's pockets, especially the ICT tycoons in the Silicon Valley. But terms like cyber war, cyber attacks and cyber espionage are making our cyber lives debilitating!
According to Wikipedia, cyber espionage is the act or practice of obtaining secret information without the permission of the holder. This was the case when the United States Defense Department accused the Peoples Republic of China's Liberation Army of backing cyber attacks against the United States Defense Networks so as to map out areas of vulnerabilities that could be exploited during crisis times. According to the VOA news report, China's primary goal in the cyber attacks is to steal America's industrial technology. The report also adduced that China will deploy several aircraft carriers over the next 15 years. But, reacting to the claims by the US, China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying said, the US Defense Department has released this type of report year after year to justify a defense build up and hype the so-called China Military threat. The report ended by saying that the United States Government is spending billions of dollars developing cyber defense and cyber weapon capabilities, saying “13 cyber war fare teams would be ready by 2015 to focus on offensive responses if the United States is attacked in cyber space”.
In 2009, Google threatened to leave China, claiming that the e-mail accounts of its Chinese users and activists have been hacked among other claims that were reported! The development led to a diplomatic row between the United States Government and the Chinese Government. But, in an article entitled: “Google's Act of War against China”, which appeared in the Forbes Magazine in January 2010. The author of the piece, Mr. Shaun Rein claimed that Google is using state censorship as a guise to leave China because it could not compete with “Baidu”, China's largest search engine! While warning against copycat business scenario, Mr. Rein said: “Taking a business model from the US and bringing it unchanged to China doesn't usually work”.
Currently, what is in the country is hacking, where internet fraudsters popularly known as “Yahoo yahoo boys” hack in to peoples accounts where they obtain personal information and use it to defraud their “Maga”, a language they use in describing their victims. In fact, a particular state governor in the country was compelled to change one of his GSM numbers because, the particular number was cloned by those fraudsters who got the backing of the governor's political enemies, and they were using the cloned number to send threatening messages to prominent people in the country, with the aim of incriminating the governor, but the governor in question acted smartly. The most popular methods among these “yahoo yahoo boys” now is the use of extractor to obtain people's e-mail addresses where they send unsolicited mails known as spam mails to people. Before now, some professional fraudsters had used Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) to disrupt and deny people, banks and other institutions network services. Sometimes, those fraudsters will build a prototype website of a popular establishment and they will be using it to send spam mails to people, asking them to upgrade their accounts. This is the type I get every day! When any one makes a mistake by entering his or her vital personal information and other data demanded, the person will deeply regret his or her decision. Sometimes I forward those spam mails to relevant government agencies and some affected companies demanding for feedback or collaboration on how to expose and catch the people behind such disingenuous practices, but, because we live in a country where one must occupy a particular office before you are hypocritically attended to, they usually ignore them. Sometimes, I doubt if those agencies ever read their mails. Let me not talk of the non-existing mails or non-functional e-mails some of these agencies advertise to create the impression that their public relations departments are up to the task, whereas all is a ruse!
The need to secure our cyber lives is more needed now than ever before. According to reports, there are about 48,366,179 internet users in Nigeria. Facebook users are 6,630,200. Our, 3.9 percent Facebook penetration is very little compared to major countries in Africa. For example, South Africa has a population of about 48,810,427 people, but Facebook users in the country are 6,269,600 with Facebook penetration rate of 12.8 percent, while Egypt's population of about 83,688,164 has Facebook users of 12,173,540 and penetration rate of about 14.5 percent.
Finally, as our internet usage is growing, relevant agencies must be pro-active. They should stop advertising non-functional e-mails. Large Corporations should not depend on one server alone; they should have their websites hosted on different servers so that, when one server is attacked, others will be safe. Telecommunications Companies should strictly monitor their staffs to avoid any unethical practices!
Comrade Edwin Ekene Uhara is an activist and public affairs commentator. He is also the National President of Young Nigerians for Change.
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