BYOD #16 Zim‘s election site hacked and suspended
This week’s round-up of digital security news and investigative journalism in Africa.
ANCIR’s weekly post offering interesting — or amusing — digital security news from around the world, and tips for newsrooms, journalists and sources on the latest security measures.
Zimbabwe’s electoral commission hacked
As protests broke out in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, on Wednesday, the electoral commission’s website was taken down in an apparent hack. TechZim reports that no one has claimed responsibility for the hack, although a message accompanying the image read, ‘Z.E.C Hacked by the victims of ZANU -PF’.
The spokesperson for the ZEC, Qhubani Moyo, acknowledged the hack, saying that the site was taken down minutes after discovering it was compromised.
Another week, another SA government site hacked?
This week, South Africa’s department of environmental affairs (DEA) went down in an alleged hack. This one follows two recent cyber attacks on the presidency’s website. According to News24, users trying to access the site saw an error message instead of the homepage. Twitter user @ViruSec, who claimed to be behind the presidency’s website hack, posted a screenshot of the DEA website with an accompanying tweet, raising suspicions that he might also be responsible for this latest hack.
Spokesperson for the DEA Albi Modise has, however, denied these claims saying that the error could not be attributed to hacking.
Google to introduce censored search engine in China
Google is reportedly working on reentering the Chinese market with a new censored mobile search app. According to The Guardian, it is designing search software that will filter out terms and content blacklisted by the Chinese government. Google’s search service has been blocked by China’s Great Firewall for almost a decade now due to the country’s strict censorship laws. Human rights defenders in China have condemned the move, stating that Google would then be supporting censorship.
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device/Data) refers to owning your data and digital property, and keeping it secure. This newsletter is brought to you with support from Project Shield and Code For Africa.
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The African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) is an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional media to small specialist units.
ANCIR works to strengthen African investigative journalism by improving the techniques, expertise, the tools used in muckraking newsrooms. This includes providing member newsrooms with the world’s best encryption and semantic analysis technologies, to forensic research support (through the Investigative Dashboard), legal services, and seed grants for cross-border collaboration.
ANCIR is incubated by and receives technical support from Code for Africa.
