Protecting News Sites from Digital Attacks
Barely a day after investigative journalist John-Allan Namu launched his website, AfricaUncensored, a series of coordinated digital attacks crashed his site. The impact was palpable — neither he nor anyone else could access his site for several hours. He later found out it was a DDoS attack.
Journalists may well remember a time when media censorship involved physical force. As Code for Kenya country lead Catherine Gicheru put it, “before [the internet age], media censorship was about pulling the printing press plug.” Today, all it takes is a coordinated digital attack that clogs traffic to your news site, making it inaccessible to everyone.
A DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack is: “sending so much traffic to a web server that no one else can get through” an analogy Google Shield Project Manager George Conard, uses to explain DDoS attacks.
This is like having hundreds of guests show up uninvited at your party. Say, you have a bouncer at the party who takes 1 minute to screen guests before allowing them in. This allows anyone who joins the line to get in within reasonable time. In a DDOS attack, a large number of extra people, who are actually not interested in going to the party, join the line. The bouncer must still search them, and after he’s done it turns out they are not actually interested in the party. This means legitimate guests in the line wait even longer, and may not even be able to get into the party due to the sheer number of fake guests.
Namu and Conard, both speakers at the meetup, shared their experiences and best practices during the September 13 Hack/Hackers Nairobi #HHNBO meet-up, that included tips on how journalists can protect their sites from such cyber attacks, the tools available for journalists to prevent attacks, and how to recover from an attack, should one happen.
The discussion ranged from why news and human rights watchdog sites are targeted for cyber attacks to what they can do to protect themselves from DDoS attacks. Such attacks are a form of censorship and an infringement on citizens’ freedom of speech and access to information.
Protecting The Power To Tell The Truth
To ensure journos and civic watchdogs are not denied the power to tell the truth, they need to protect themselves.
Protecting news websites from cyber attacks can cost thousands of dollars. This is usually in hardware and software that attempt to validate the authenticity of the requests, or allows the websites to handle much more traffic than usual during the DDOS attempt.
This digital attack map shows the increasing frequency, size, volume and sophistication of DDoS attacks around the world. For investigative journalists like Namu, such threats are an emerging concern.
The loss suffered by journalists and news media websites when their readers are unable to access their sites cannot be quantified. However, the average cost of repairing a site after a DDoS attack is US$50,000 for e-commerce sites.
DDoS attacks are not only used to silence the opposition, prevent access to information and threaten journalists, they can also be used to destroy businesses, reputations and steal customer data.
It is important to note that preventing access to a service is in itself an attack — think of being unable to access a payment service such as a credit card, or an alerts service, or a news service.
News sites, irrespective of size or reach, are also vulnerable to DDoS attacks.
They can protect themselves from DDoS attacks by writing code, installing hardware or using cloud-based services such as Google Shield.
Such attacks can be driven by events such as happened in January 2015 following the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in France. According to Arbor Networks, following this and the protest marches held thereafter, an unprecedented number of DDoS attacks was launched against websites in France.
The issue of internet hygiene for journalists came up during the discussion and Namu gave a few tips on how to be secure online. This led to a twitter conversation on whether our colleges train journos on the basics of online security. The community extended the conversation online, you can catch up on what was discussed by following the hashtag #HHNBO.
To learn more about Project Shield visit: g.co.shield
Next Hacks/Hackers Nairobi Meetup
Our November #HHNBO meetup will feature an engaging fireside conversation led by Patrick Gathara, cartoonist and blogger and Melissa Mbugua, a tech enthusiast. During this session, the community will discuss how citizens, journalists and techies can use technology to hold governments accountable.
The next #HHNBO meetup will be held on Thursday, 17 November, 2016 at Nairobi Garage, 4th Floor, Piedmont Plaza, Ngong Road from 6pm to 8pm. Join us and share your experience and/or ideas on this topical issue.
Do you have speaker and theme suggestions? Add them here and we will be sure to slot them in.
The worlds of hackers and journalists are coming together, as reporting goes digital and Internet companies become media empires.
The worlds of hackers and journalists are coming together, as reporting goes digital and Internet companies become media empires.
Journalists call themselves “hacks,” someone who can churn out words in any situation. Hackers use the digital equivalent of duct tape to whip out code.
Hacker-journalists try and bridge the two worlds. Hacks/Hackers Africa aims to bring all these people together — those who are working to help people make sense of our world. It’s for hackers exploring technologies to filter and visualize information, and for journalists who use technology to find and tell stories. In the age of information overload and collapse of traditional business models for legacy media, their work has become even more crucial.
Code for Africa, the continent’s largest #OpenData and civic technology initiative, recognises this and is spearheading the establishment of a network of HacksHackers chapters across Africa to help bring together pioneers for collaborative projects and new ventures.
Follow Hacks/Hackers Africa on Twitter and Facebook and join the Hacks/Hackers community Nairobi community group today.
