January, 2018 - itbusinessdirect

Hackers breach National Bank systems making off with Ksh 29m

January 22, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Hackers have breached the National Bank of Kenya systems making away with Ksh 29 million. Confirming the incident through a statement on their twitter handle, @National_Bank, National Bank confirmed the incident stating that indeed there was an attempt fraud in normal course of business on 17th January but the bank’s monitoring and security resources frustrated the attempt “The amount of attempted fraud is about Ksh 29 million and we are confident we will recover most of that money,” read the statement. The bank also confirmed that security are in pursuit…

Data-stealing spyware traced to Lebanon

January 22, 2018

A security bug that has infected thousands of smartphones has been uncovered by campaign group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Working with mobile security firm Lookout, researchers discovered that malware in fake messaging designed to look like WhatsApp and Signal had stolen gigabytes of data. Targets included military personnel, activists, journalists and lawyers. Researchers say they traced the malware to a Lebanese government building. The threat, dubbed Dark Caracal by the researchers, looks as if it could come from a nation state and appears to use shared infrastructure linked to…

Bitcoin and Ethereum hit by massive decline, Other cryptocurrencies dropped even worse

January 17, 2018January 17, 2018

Most major digital currencies sold off sharply on Tuesday, but the declines in bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin prices weren’t as bad as much of the rest of the market. Bitcoin was down 17 percent at that time, ethereum was down 19 percent and litecoin was down 19 percent, according to the same site. The declines followed speculation in the market about what regulators in Asia may be planning for digital tokens. On Monday, a report from Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, said Beijing plans to block domestic access to Chinese and…

New Intel security flaw allows remote access to corporate laptops by hackers

January 16, 2018

Remember the latest “Spectre” and “Meltdown” vulnerabilities recently found in the micro-chips that are used in almost all computers, tablets and smartphones today? A new security flaw has been found in Intel hardware by Finish company F-Secure. The new vulnerability could enable hackers to access corporate laptops remotely. F-Secure said in a statement that the flaw was an issue within Intel Active Management Technology (AMT), “which is commonly found in most corporate laptops, (and) allows an attacker to take complete control over a user’s device in a matter of seconds,”…

Five African tech trends to watch in 2018

January 10, 2018 Editor

The BBC’s Clare Spencer picks five African tech trends to look out for in 2018. Land registry you can’t tamper with The idea: Documentation is often lacking in parts of Africa, leading to land disputes because it isn’t clear who owns the land. Even when there are records, sometimes they have been tampered with. A record that cannot be deleted, using something called blockchain, could be used to prevent these disputes. Blockchain is a method of recording data – a digital ledger of transactions, agreements, contracts – anything that needs…

Rush to fix serious computer chips flaws

January 4, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Tech firms are working to fix two major bugs in computer chips that could allow hackers to steal sensitive data. Google researchers said one of the “serious security flaws”, dubbed “Spectre”, was found in chips made by Intel, AMD and ARM. The other, known as “Meltdown” affects Intel-made chips alone.The industry has been aware of the problem for months and hoped to solve it before details were made public. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said there was no evidence that the vulnerability had been exploited. According to the…