The Computer Society of Kenya

Since 1986

DNCAKBOARD3007gDAILY NATION By MARYANNE GICOBI

Thursday July 31, 2014

All government websites will be hosted in a central place by the Communications Authority of Kenya to curb hacking.

Director-General Francis Wangusi told journalists in Nairobi that the websites had been hosted “haphazardly” but will now be under one server.

This comes after the recent hacking of state online platforms, including Kenya Defence Forces’ and Deputy President William Ruto’s Twitter accounts.

A member of the hacker group Anonymous, who infiltrated the accounts and used them to post offensive messages, claimed to have also defaced Immigration and Registration of Persons and National Environment Trust Fund websites and the Integrated Financial Management Information System.

'WAKE UP CALL'

The financial system interlinks government planning and budgeting, for expenditure management and control, accounting, audit and reporting to curb funds misuse and corruption.

“The website hacks were a wake up call to the government,” Mr Wangusi said on Tuesday during an international conference on e-learning, in Nairobi.

“Each ministry has been hosting its own website and security varied from one ministry to another. This exposed the ministry websites to a lot of vulnerability.”

Mr Wangusi said the single server would monitor data flow in and out of the websites. That would even prevent “in-house hacking” as any unauthorised person trying to log into the systems would be detected.

“Those operating and accessing the government websites will have to be authorised, unlike in the past when we didn’t know who was accessing the website.”
He said social media accounts that are prone to hacking are not authenticated.

“Most Twitter accounts have not been verified by the main Twitter corporate in the United States such that it has become difficult to account whether the accounts are genuine or not when hacked,” he said.

Recovering such accounts after they were hacked was difficult and the owners have to close them.

Meanwhile, state agencies are investigating the possibility of an “insider job” in the recent hackings.

Sources familiar with the investigations told the Nation that it was highly likely that employees of the affected agencies played a role in the hacking that exposed the country’s slack cybercrime preparedness.

“We are also going through the systems to track the footprints of the attackers,” the source said.

On Friday, top security chiefs held a crisis meeting with senior officials of the ICT ministry and the communications authority to map how to prevent more serious attacks.

The meeting was held at the communications authority offices and was attended by ICT Principal Secretary Joseph Tiampati and representatives of the National Intelligence Service, Kenya Defence Forces, CID and other security agencies.

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