Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

In 2006

As hackers in Kenya, we have/are always been taken as fact-less doomsayers and merchants of fear about an IT apocalypse.

I remember in 2006, From a 32Kbps line in my bedroom in Kampala, I Hacked into a top Nairobi Stock brokerage firm registered with the CMA/NSE and downloaded their Entire Database of Investing clients. The database, obviously included some juicy details e.g. Names, Cell #s, Address, ID No, Trading History, Usernames and Password.

Being the Naive and PURELY technical hacker I was those days [No Business Sense or mentorship], I sent the MD and IT manager an email with the Database as a Zipped attachment and advised them on how to secure their enterprise and lock-out people. Maybe it is the Concortion of Matoke, Lumonde, Kallo and oBushere I had taken for lunch, But this was a very dumb move.

“You have just burned an opportunity to have these guys pay you through their noses!!”, Said an Irate and totally annoyed Mwaniki. “Next time, talk to me or get a BUSINESS PERSON to handle the BUSINESS for you. You are just a hacker”. Hmmn, Kumbe things I do for fun could rake big scrilla.

2 days later, ‘I received an Email ridden with threats and gloating on how they can send cops to my house before I could Spell the name ‘DjembaDjemba’ and have me locked out for good.

So, What makes Kenya a FAT Juicy Bulls-Eye for hackers?

A lot of  things make Kenya a big fat juicy and warm err.. target.

1. This is Kenya – Name me the country where Systems like Mpesa/Zap pioneered? Yeah, Kenya. Ushahidi? Kenya. This makes Software development houses a major target for Industrial IP espionage.
2. No IT Criminal Law – Well, breaking into a place requires physical presence. so, technically, hacking isnt breaking in. In some states in the US, for you to be convicted of Hacking, you must be caught LIVE actually logged on tho the victims machine. The server/route logs from their ends are totally inadmissible. For all they know, states the rule, the machine could just be hacking another, and not the user. Logs can also be manipulated to show anything the SysAdmin wants them to show.
3. Kenyans are too stressed, to remember complex passwords – During all the times  I have had to Prank-Call or Social Engineer an ISP Support desk or every time I have gone to a Dormans or a Java, I have concluded that Kenyans use the Following password for Cisco Routers, Wireless Networks etc [1234124, 12345678901, p@ssw0rd, jesussaves, welovejesus, railatosha, hague]. or if the username is kamau, the password is normally kamau123 or KamauMnoma or personal/Work/neighbours car Number Plate or Date of birth..
4. Kenyans Trust the padlocks – Alot of times I have visited organizations [Not all ofcourse] and have been given an IT tour. the conversations normally goes like this:

IT – “And this is our server room. You can see all the servers are securely locked in there with that huge padlock.”

Salim : “What firewall do you use?”

IT : “We have Fire Extinguishers and also motion detectors.”

Salim : “No, No. I meant, FIREWALL. To really secure the servers from intrusion. Internally and externally.”

IT : “Hiyo padlock no Solex original mzee”

Salim : “OK. good.”

It is also a culture that most people use the same password for their PC, FB Account, Gmail, Chat etc. Usual Excuse : “Sitaki Stress ya kukumbuka password kama 30 mzee!”

Who can/will be Hacked in 2010?

This is no indication at all that the cogs are already oiled and raring to go. Just plain fact-less prediction based on Obvious situations. If you are a pool player, you know that if a black ball is set, it will eventually be pocketed. What is in the plate, will eventually be eaten.

The following are my personal top 5:

1. The Stock Market – I will not be surprised to wake up one day and find The price of Safaricm Shares is 15 bob. Definitely, the regulations protect the Market against such differentials, but what about the confidence of oblivious investor? One of the Arms of the Trio [NSE, CMA, CDSC] has a very insecure setup that could be the achilles heel for a skilled/semi-skilled hacker.
2. The Banking Sector – Alot of banks are jumping to the SMS and Online banking bandwagon. I must agree I accept the software models and security architecture of some of the players, but MOSt banks seem happy to just fire up an IIS with default settings box, throw in some insecure code and walla! They have an online banking system!
3. Social / eCommerce Sites – The advent of fibre brings with itself a surge of websites and me-too replicas of social networks and eCommerce and payment platforms. Quite a number are designed with a very strict methodology taking care of performance and security concerns, but there are still alot of vulnerable apps in terms of data sanitation and business logic.
4. Government Websites – A great percentage of Government are done Gungho by just setting up a quick installation od Joomla or Drupal. There is no differentiation between CMS implementors and actual web developers worth their salt. I have a bad feeling The reliance of security features of the CMSes and the reliance on the un-educated CMS guru on security will have bad ramifications. Let me not even list the government websites that have been recently hacked.
5. Individuals/SMEs – Corporates and SMEs normally need a one-time secure setup by a seasoned pro and then everything runs smoothly. Behaviorally, to save cost, new devices and configurations are added to the LAN without consulting the pro, later on. The adding of new items and possibly the need to change [read adulterate] the secure settings leads to an insecure environment. Alot of reasons e.g. espionage [delete all their data because they are my competition], Disgruntled employees, Ex-staff with access etc make the SMES a risk factor. again, since most ISPs have same/default password for their equipment [for ease of remembrance for the techies], a hacker can hop from Zimmerman to Hurlingham Zombifying home computers without even the owner smelling the trap.

Habari ndio hiyo!

Back to code..

Share on Facebook

In a previous Post, I talked about how Google could use GoogleCheckOut to monetize Africa and do a 2-fold win-win move:

• Help Millions if Africans access e-Commerce and sell to the world, as opposed to locally.
• Enable Google take a big chuck of the millions of USDs sent from US/Europe back home to Africa.

I also talked about the blacklistic that payPal does for African IPs. So bubbling with Ideas and possibilities, I approached CK [of Google Kenya and not DjCk]. Google is your friend, right? Ohh how wrong I was!

CK Made it clear to me that [Quoting the chat]:

• unfortunately we [google] are not ready for monetization in Africa
• even if we were to monetize the entire existing online population in sub-saharan africa, it would not be a significant amount.

So, apparently, Africa is too small for Google. I thought not. So I googled (sic!) some facts about Africa Remittances and what I foind blew my mind. According to this report, :

Kenyans in the diaspora are contributing an equivalent of 3.8 per cent of national income through remittances.

In the year 2004, for instance, Kenyans living and working abroad remitted about Ksh35 billion ($464 million), which overshadows the net foreign direct investment (FDI) of Ksh3.6 billion ($50.4 million), which accounted for 0.41 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

More recently,  [According to this]:

Despite the global recession, remittances by Kenyans abroad, a key source of hard currency, grew 6.6 per cent to $611 million (Sh49 billion) last year, Central Bank has said.

However, the growth was much slower than the 41 per cent rise the previous year [2007] when the remittances stood at $573.6 million (Sh46 billion).

The figure above oscillates between .6B and 1B USD depending on the source.

So, WHERE IS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR PAYPAL?

I believe that internet has reached sign-up saturation… people no longer jump to a bandwagon and register with no clear benefits. They now need a REASON. Free email sevices like yahoo and lycos had a boom because they had that UNIQUE offering.. FREE. Sadly, FREE is no longer a selling point nowadays.. people need to feed the fundamental human urge.. the urge to trade.

If a big player [PayPal] could use TRADE as a reason to get people online, this would be a winner. You know africans. We NEED a valid and convincing REASON to do anything constructive.

Trust me… Wangechi will not get online to poke Otieno… but tell her that Otieno will pay… she will log on to your site faster than you can say Paypal. Think of all the possible implementations of MicroPayment and MicroLending for social and business reasons in a typical African/Kenyan setup.

I will seek audiences with Menekse and the like and see if this cross-continent trade with Paypal Linking to Zap and Mpesa using our hand-made KuKanja Payment gateway can be made a reality.

More later…

Share on Facebook