[kictanet] NSA Tapping into Google & Yahoo Networks? How is Kenya protected?

[Phares Kariuki]

I’ll very selfishly advocate for an increased uptake of local cloud services, away from the NSA’s prying eyes, with locally established standards of encryption etc… 

We’ve got capable universities that can assist in coming up with new encryption etc standards for the military & government. 

Interesting article by Charles Obbo…. http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Spy-more-on-your-friends-than-foes/-/440808/2053660/-/j8oy4g/-/index.html

-- 
Phares Kariuki
From: Ngigi Waithaka Ngigi Waithaka
Reply: Ngigi Waithaka ngigi at at.co.ke
Date: October 31, 2013 at 9:12:10 AM
To: Phares Kariuki pkariuki at gmail.com
Subject:  [kictanet] NSA Tapping into Google & Yahoo Networks? How is Kenya protected?  
Listers,

Just came across this http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html?hpid=z1

It looks like Google might have been caught by the NSA with their pants down since hacking into their Data Transport layer simply gives up all the secrets that encryption is supposed to be protecting.

Now, moving on swiftly to the local setup, I am also concerned that even as we look to start pushing for National Standards of Encryption through the PKI project, whether we as a country have come together to review and see how to protect our countries intelligence and data.

We also know for a fact that the US was busy tapping into World Leaders phones, and I can bet if there are a few presidents to be 'tapped' in Africa, ours should be way up on that ladder!

However, more worrying would be, how protected are our internal networks from such tapping, even from locals? Could there be a guy who has tapped into Safaricoms internal network and is busy reading every email, chat that is flying through and perhaps selling such information to our erstwhile enemies the Al-Shabbab?

I was once very surprised when a personal friend got a transcript of all his calls, and chat messages, word-for-word for the previous past 6 months, dug up from one of the local Telcos. The ease with which such information was availed appalled me as it clearly means that the Telcos clearly store all our chats, and such records in clear text months after we have used them and a guy with basic SQL knowledge just needs to hack into the network (easy) and call them up.

So, as we continue with the PKI project, there are really very basic things on security of data that we as a nation haven't even dealt with.
--
Regards,

Waithaka Ngigi
Chief Executive Officer | Alliance Technologies | MCK Nairobi Synod Building
T + 254 (0) 20 2333 471 |Office Mobile: +254 786 28 28 28 | M + 254 737 811 000
www.at.co.ke


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