Information is Power

A group of hackers has hijacked tens of thousands of Google's Chromecast streaming dongles, Google Home smart speakers and smart TVs with built-in Chromecast technology in recent weeks by exploiting a bug that's allegedly been ignored by Google for almost five years. The attackers, who go by Twitter handles @HackerGiraffe and @j3ws3r, managed to hijack Chromecasts’ feeds and display a pop-up, spreading a security warning as well as controversial YouTube star PewDiePie propaganda. The hackers are the same ones who hijacked more than 50,000 internet-connected printers worldwide late last year by exploiting vulnerable printers to print out flyers asking everyone to subscribe to PewDiePie YouTube channel. This time, the hackers remotely scanned the internet for compatible devices, including Chromecasts, exposed to the internet through poorly configured routers that have Universal Plug and Play [UPnP] enabled by default. The hackers then exploited a design flaw in Chromecast that a

The United Nations will appoint a new envoy to Somalia, following the expulsion of the Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in that country. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday agreed to appoint a new UN envoy after Somalia’s president refused to reverse the decision to expel Nicholas Haysom for raising human rights concerns. Guterres spoke by phone with President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed on Friday, his second call to the Somali leader in three days, to once again urge him to change his mind, according to diplomats. But the president dug in his heels and said Haysom would remain persona non grata and would not be allowed to return to Somalia, diplomats said. Official UN reaction? Guterres “deeply regrets” Somalia’s decision, said UN spokesman Farhan Haq, adding that the UN chief nevertheless intends to appoint a new UN envoy. The UN Security Council met behind closed doors to agree on a response to Somalia’s decision. But during that meeting, China asked fo

Germany has been hit with the biggest hack in its history. A group of unknown hackers has leaked highly-sensitive personal data from more than 100 German politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brandenburg’s prime minister Dietmar Woidke, along with some German artists, journalists, and YouTube celebrities. The leaked data that was published on a Twitter account (@_0rbit) and dated back to before October 2018 includes phone numbers, email addresses, private chats, bills, credit card information and photos of victims' IDs. Although it is yet unclear who perpetrated this mass hack and how they managed to perform it, the leaked data appears to be collected unauthorizedly by hacking into their smartphones. The hack targeted all of Germany's political parties currently represented in the federal parliament, including the CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, Left party (Die Linke) and Greens, except for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). While Justice Minister Katarina Barl

Tallying centres in Kinshasa began compiling results of last weekend’s chaotic elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday following delays in getting local tallies ready for central counting. DRC’s electoral body, (CENI) announced a delay of results having received only 20 percent of votes it said. “We don’t know how long it will take to compile the results but there is a lot of work to do. Even if they say they will give results on Sunday we don’t think it will be possible because we only started today and until now, in the Mount Amba district, where we have 904 polling stations, we still haven’t got through 100’‘, said Papi Sakalamba, witness from the camp of an independent candidate. Intimidation and harassment against journalists, opposition candidates and human rights defenders continues to take place, and this being a very sensitive. The United Nations Human Rights Office in Geneva on Friday expressed concerned about the latest developments there. Ravina Shamdasani i

Cameroon has a new Prime Minister in the person of Dion Ngute Joseph. His appointment was announced by a decree signed by Head of State, President Paul Biya on Friday. The Prime Minister according to the governance structure is the Head of Government. Dion Ngute replaces long serving Philemon Yang in the role. Born in March 1954, the last known government post he held was as Minister in the Presidency between 2 March 2018 – January 4, 2019 when he was announced Premier. At at 2017, he was Cameroon Minister Delegate to the Minister of External Relations in charge of cooperation with the Commonwealth, and represented government at Oslo humanitarian summit on Nigeria and the Lake Chad region. He also served as director at the Advanced School of Administration & Magistracy ENAM (1991-97). His appointment is part of a wider reshuffle by Biya who won a seventh term in office in October last 2018. — President Paul BIYA (@PR_Paul_BIYA)   Instructively, he hails from one of Cameroon’s resti

The African Union has called upon invested parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo to respect the results of the presidential election, as tensions grow over delays in the counting process. The elections will determine who succeeds President Joseph Kabila, who has been at the helm of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest country for nearly 18 years. Moussa Faki, head of the AU Commission, met on Friday with the head of the AU observer mission, Dioncounda Traore, a former president of Mali, at the bloc’s headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. Respect of the election results is crucial. “Respect of the election results is crucial,” Faki said in a brief message posted on Twitter. The 80-strong AU observer team had already warned on Wednesday that they expected the official results to be “in line with the vote” of the people. The Congolese election commission said logistical problems may force it to postpone publication of provisional results from Sunday’s vote, which also included

Experts discovered over 35 million US voter records for sale in a hacking forum. Millions of voter records are available for sale on the Dark Web, experts from Anomali and Intel 471 discovered 35 million US voter records for sale in a hacking forum. Researchers have analyzed a sample of voter records and determined the data to be valid with a high degree of confidence. Records in the voter registration database include personal and voting history information of US residents. “Certain states require the seller to personally travel to locations in-state to receive the updated voter information.” reads the post published by Anomali. “This suggests the information disclosure is not necessarily a technical compromise but rather a likely targeted campaign by a threat actor redistributing possibly legitimately obtained voter data for malicious purposes on a cybercrime forum,”  The seller only provided the number of records for the lists of voters belonging to three states asking for prices be