Information is Power

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Martin Fayulu, leader of the Lamuka coalition in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, has called for a national debate between contestants in the December 23 elections. His call comes four days to the end of campaigning, December 21, and under a week to the opening of voting centers. According to Fayulu, the occasion will help candidates share their ideas with voters. He made the call via a Twitter post on Monday. “I propose a live broadcast debate on national television and Radio + private media between presidential candidates. “This will be an opportunity to demonstrate that (for) on the ground ideas and their implementation, our coalition brings concrete proposals,” his tweet read. Fayulu’s challenge comes at a time when candidates are busily campaigning across the country as they canvass votes to replace outgoing Joseph Kabila. The DRC is hoping for its first ever peaceful transition of power. The Lamuka coalition comprises three aspirants and two banned hopefuls. The two are fo

Another Social Media Giant, Twitter has been hit with a minor data breach incident that the social networking site believes linked to a suspected state-sponsored attack. In a blog post published on Monday, Twitter revealed that while investigating a vulnerability affecting one of its support forms, the company discovered evidence of the bug being misused to access and steal users’ exposed information. The impacted support form in question was used by account holders to contact Twitter about issues with their account. Discovered in mid-November, the support form API bug exposed considerably less personal information, including the country code of users' phone numbers associated with their Twitter account, and "whether or not their account had been locked." So far the company has declined to provide more details about the incident or an estimate for the number of accounts potentially impacted but says it believes that the attack may have ties to state-sponsored actors. &quo

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Independent National Electoral Commission is preparing contested voter machines for the December 23 Presidential election. The move comes after thousands of voting machines went up in flames last week in the capital Kinshasa. Opposition parties have strongly contested the introduction of untested tablet-like voting machines for the election. They argue that the machines are more vulnerable to vote-rigging than paper and ink, and could be compromised by the unreliability of Congo’s power supply. The commission believe the voting machines will facilitate, speed up and give reliable and truthful results in the long-delayed December 23 polls. Last week’s blaze at a depot destroyed 8,000 of over 10,000 voting machines due to be used in the capital Kinshasa, but CENI said the election would go ahead as scheduled. Though the commission has said nothing on who it believes is responsible for the fire, the ruling coalition and leading opposition candidates imme

New Shamoon Malware Variant Targets Italian Oil and Gas Companies. Shamoon is back… one of the most destructive malware families that caused damage to Saudi Arabia's largest oil producer in 2012 and this time it has targeted energy sector organizations primarily operating in the Middle East. Earlier this week, Italian oil drilling company Saipem was attacked and sensitive files on about 10 percent of its servers were destroyed, mainly in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, but also in India and Scotland. Saipem admitted Wednesday that the computer virus used in the latest cyber attack against its servers is a variant Shamoon—a disk wiping malware that was used in the most damaging cyber attacks in history against Saudi Aramco and RasGas Co Ltd and destroyed data on more than 30,000 systems. The cyber attack against Saudi Aramco, who is the biggest customer of Saipem, was attributed to Iran, but it is unclear who is behind the latest cyber

South Sudan’s government has protested the decision of the United States to impose fresh sanctions and cut financial aid to the country. Addressing a press conference on Monday, the foreign ministry spokesman Mawien Makol warned that the ‘unjustifiable’ actions of the US government could undermine the implementation of the recent peace agreement. “The government of South Sudan would like to register its concern and protest in the strongest terms against these unjustified unilateral sanctions, and on other USAstatements designed to undermine the implementation of the peace agreement in South Sudan,” Makol told journalists. The government of South Sudan has endeavoured to promote dialogue with the government of United States of America, and welcomes any proposals on improving bilateral relations. Last Friday, the US Treasury slapped sanctions on an ex-Israel military officer and two South Sudanese nationals, Obac William Olawo and Gregory Vasili, accusing them of fuelling conflict in the