Cyber Attacks Become Epic

Recently, the world witnessed the largest ever cyber heist, where cyber criminals hacked various debit card companies and $45 Million vanished from customers’ accounts. 45 Million dollars, approximately 4 Billion Kenya Shillings! The gang of eight withdrew monies from 26 countries throughout the globe in a coordinated manner. The first instance of the criminal activity happened on December 22, 2012 and the second on February 19-20 this year. After allegedly manipulating the withdrawal limits set by banks, casher gangs worldwide hit the ATMs, conducting some 4,500 transactions worth $5 million across about 20 countries. In the second attack, the group broke into the Bank of Muscat based in Oman. Then in the space of 10 hours, casher cells in 24 countries conducted some 36,000 transactions, withdrawing $40 million from ATMs.

Let’s not forget that on 20 March 2013, three South Korean television stations and a bank where cyber attacked, leaving all workstations frozen such that most of the staff could not work. About 48,000 PCs and servers in the organizations were struck during the incident. The assault shut down computer networks at TV stations KBS, MBC and YTN, and halted operations at three banks - Shinhan, NongHyup and Jeju. Some ATM withdraws and mobile payments could not be transacted. The malware, known as “DarkSeoul” in the computer world, evaded some of South Korea’s most popular antivirus products and to render computers unusable. Globally, a growing trend of cybercrime is through ATM fraud. Cyber criminals can gather ATM credentials from the magnetic strip of ATM cards and create replicas that are used to withdraw customer’s funds without their knowledge.

Another form of cybercrime that’s been growing is Identity theft. This is a form of stealing someone's identity in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name. A person’s details illegally obtained could include email addresses and their passwords. Using such details, cyber-criminals can initiate and authorize transactions at the victim’s expense. For Google Mail users, an easy way to avoid this is by using the two-step authentication method to access your inbox. Two-step verification adds an extra layer of security to your users' Google Apps accounts by requiring them to enter a verification code in addition to their username and password, when signing in to their account. It helps protect a user's account from unauthorized access should someone manage to obtain their password. Even if a password is cracked, guessed, or otherwise stolen, an attacker can't sign in without access to the user's verification codes, which only the user can obtain via their own mobile phone.

Coming closer home, for the last few years, there has been a rising number of ATM fraud cases. According to PricewaterCoopers (PwC) Global Economic crime survey, some regions including Kenya, South Africa and UK reported an increase of 40 per cent in fraud cases in 2011. Last year, Deloitte Kenya reported that commercial banks in Kenya are losing more than Sh3 billion a year, with Automated Teller Machine (ATM) fraud. This has been compounded by the rising number of carjacking incidents, which result into forced ATM withdrawals. Despite the rise in ATM fraud, the banking sector maintained a low profile on the matter. Shouldn’t they publicize the incidents to create awareness for their customers to be weary of this form of cybercrime? Statistically, there were more than 10.7 million ATMs, credit and debit cards in circulation by end of 2012, representing a 6 per cent increase over the previous year in Kenya. This is in tandem with the growth in the purchasing power of the population but so has the risk of ATM fraud, a larger target for the cyber criminals. To curb future ATM fraud, banks are now migrating from the magnetic strip ATM cards to the chip-based ones.

One of the effective ways of preventing cybercrime is by use of public key infrastructure, which allocates virtual identities to internet and digital services users. A PKI-public key infrastructure- enables users of a basically unsecure public network such as the Internet to securely and privately exchange data and money through the use of a public and a private cryptographic key pair that is obtained and shared through a trusted authority. The public key infrastructure provides for a digital certificate that can identify an individual or an organization and directory services that can store and, when necessary, revoke the certificates. Last year, Kenya was said to planning to adopt PKI through the Kenya ICT Board. Has there been any progress?

The Battery Life Challenge

The Mobile World Congress 2013 took place on 25–28 February at Fira Gran Via, in Barcelona, Spain. The event was the world's largest exhibition for the mobile industry and a conference featuring prominent executives representing mobile operators, device manufacturers, technology providers, vendors and content providers from across the world. This year, a different dynamic trend was taking shape; focus on the battery life of mobile devices. Previously, mobile devices manufacturers have been embroiled in a battle for supremacy in terms of processing power, memory, operating system and applications. However, as much as these components may be perfected, a cell phone's battery life has become one of the most important considerations when manufacturing a mobile device. In fact, customers are now keen on evaluating smart phones based on their battery lives. Most customers have seen their smart devices run out of charge while they are in the middle of an important call or replying to an urgent email. Most rural customers may not have the privilege of electricity and thus cannot maintain devices that require daily charging. Even though battery technology has improved 300% in the past 20 years, mobile technology has advanced more than a thousand-fold during the same time period.

The mobile devices manufacturers can borrow a leaf from the medicine fraternity. Batteries are used in implantable cardiac pacemakers to generate electric pulse in the heart. This presents unique challenges to their developers and manufacturers in terms of high levels of safety and reliability. In addition, the batteries must have longevity to avoid frequent replacements. The cardiac pacemaker uses half of its battery power for cardiac stimulation and the other half for housekeeping tasks such as monitoring and data logging. Using modern technology, the battery of a cardiac pacemaker lasts for about ten years and even today is the power source for many manufacturers of cardiac pacemakers. The initial pacemakers could only last for two years and required the patient to undergo a surgical procedure to replace the battery. The good news is that the procedure to change your pacemaker's battery is often quicker and requires less recovery time than the procedure to first implant your pacemaker.



At the Mobile World Congress 2013, Nokia unveiled a stripped-down cell phone aimed at the budget-conscious consumer and long battery life. The Nokia 105 mobile phone will retail for approximately Kshs. 1,500 and has a feature a battery that only needs charging. The phone features include 1.45-inch, 128 x 128 resolution color TFT screen, 8 MB ROM memory, no camera, flashlight, FM radio, speaking alarm clock, and five basic games, like Sudoku and the classic Snake. On a full charge, the Nokia 105 can deliver 12.5 hours of talk time or remain powered for up to 35 days on standby. On other hand, Samsung has recently released an infographic titled “Resolving the Battery Challenge in Mobile Devices” to show how modern mobile memory solutions help solving the battery life challenge in mobile devices. Samsung’s mobile memory solution, known as LPDRAM, can lower operating power consumption by 33% and standby power consumption by nearly 90%. That’s enough power to keep mobile devices on standby for more than 500 hours. There is also a new kid on the block, SpareOne. The cellular phone runs on a single AA battery, similar to the ones used in the torch or remote control, providing a constant line of communication even in the absence of electricity as well as the ability to pre-program important phone numbers for easy access to visitor, travel and emergency services. The phone can offer ten hours of talk time and can hold charge for up to 15 years if unused.

Meanwhile, as we continue to use our smartphones, there are a few tips on how to keep our batteries going. Due to the huge displays screen, a lot of power charge is consumed whenever we use our mobile devices. The best way to reduce this power consumption is by dimming the screen, especially during daytime when we can easily view the content of the screen. The lower the brightness, the lower the power required. The next thing is to ensure a short lock screen timeout, could be a few seconds, such that the phone locks and shuts the displays within the shortest period after use. Another aspect that most of us are not aware of is to avoid vibration mode. For a phone to vibrate, a micro motor is power to initiate the vibration mechanism, and this consumes power. A ringtone alert will suffice in most of the occasions. Now, we are fond of applications such as Google Navigator, four square and so on, that indicate our current location using the Global Positioning System. Most of the time, we forget or ignore to switch off the GPS functionality on the phone once we are done. With continue updates from the satellites, the phone consumes a great deal of power, thus turn off GPS when it’s not necessary.

Whenever we find a hotspot, we turn on our phone’s Wifi to take advantage of the low cost speedy Internet. Yet again, we often forget to turn it off afterwards. Though Wifi consumes less power than the GSM signal, we can save power by turning off Wifi when we are not using it. The same case applies to activation of Bluetooth. The other aspects is to abort applications that run in the background while we multitask, the more the applications, the more the processing power and the more the processing power, the more the battery power consumed. Lastly, we need to limit the notification we get; facebook, twitter, emails, meeting reminders and so on, or reduce the frequency.