By Austin Ogwuda
At times it baffles this Reporter to notice what can be called high level of incompetence or sheer dereliction of duty.
Otherwise, how can it be explained that since this administration of Governor Sheriff Oborevwori came on board in May this year, hardly a month passes without the governor’s spokesman, Sir Festus Ahon raising alarm of another operation of scammers hacking phones of top government officials.
Ahon, too, was once, a victim. Although he never told us if the hackers have stopped hacking his.
I was alarmed when Ahon came up with another press release yesterday, Monday.
And as a journalist he is, he aptly titled it: “Delta alerts residents on recurring scam acts”.
Below was the press statement as sent to The Town Hall Media
*Delta State Government, Monday, alerted Deltans and the general public against falling prey to the activities of scammers whose specialty was fooling the unsuspecting public in order to obtain unjust financial favours under the guise of giving them appointments.
Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Sir Festus Ahon, who reiterated the warning for the third time, said some criminal elements were impersonating the Secretary to the State Government, Dr Kingsley Emu; Chief of Staff to the Governor, Hon Johnson Erijo and himself to defraud unsuspecting members of the public.”In a statement in Asaba, the Governor’s image maker warned the populace to beware of these phone numbers: “08023138247, 09025320424, 09026109796, 08023138247” or any other number the fraudsters may decide to use, purporting to be the Delta SSG, Chief of Staff to the Governor, Chief Press Secretary to the Governor or any other top government appointee.
He maintained that the said phone numbers did not belong to any of the State government appointees, but were being used by the scammers to con people for money.
Ahon, appealed to security agencies to take necessary action on the matter to prevent people from losing their hard-earned money to the con artists.
The State Government further warned members of the public to be wary and not allow themselves to be duped by the fraudsters parading themselves as agents of the State Government, adding that the Government does not collect money to appoint people*
Take a cursory look at the heading, the word, ‘recurring’ says it all. That means this operation has being going on, uninterrupted, unabetted.
Since this Reporter is a novice or not too conversant with the digital world, I decided to dig in to find out if these hackers have the monopoly or in appropriate way, are they only people with the technical know how – in hacking?
And what came out of my finding is shocking.
In fact it was even the other way round: to mean that government has the wherewithal, the enablement to smoke out these so-called hackers because they are better placed with all the professional trainings, intelligence and other security infrastructure at their disposal including huge finance available to them.
Without boring esteemed readers, Amnesty International came out with a finding.
Mister Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, Amnesty International’s Head of the Security Lab on September 25, 2023, wrote:
“Governments can hack into your phone while you sleep”.
Since Amnesty Tech created an innovative Security Lab in 2019, the team has been putting a stop to spyware hacks by Governments intent on threatening activists and violating human rights.
Technologists were brought on board to work alongside other researchers, with the aim of exposing how new spyware tools were being used to hack into the phones of activists, investigative journalists, human rights lawyers and other members of civil society.
Here Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, Amnesty International’s Head of the Security Lab, reveals how the team is supporting those at risk of being hacked and why the likes of Apple and Google are acting on Amnesty’s findings.
“When Amnesty discovered a staff member working on Saudi Arabia had been a Pegasus target – a type of spyware developed by the then little-known Israeli cyber-arms company NSO Group – there was a moment of horror.
In 2018, the malicious link – connected to the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware – was delivered through a WhatsApp message to the staff member’s personal phone. They weren’t the only target. At the time, Amnesty’s research identified a Saudi critic targeted in the same campaign.
The initial WhatsApp link was the key clue, unravelling a network of 600 different domains that had been used to deliver Pegasus attacks in dozens of countries.
Once the spyware had wormed its way into the phones, it was able to pull out all the data on the device, including photos, messages, GPS locations, Signal messages – it could even film you through the phone’s camera.
Following the attack, a formal Security Lab was created under the leadership of Claudio Guarnairi, who had years of experience investigating digital attacks under his belt.
From there, a range of talented technologists were recruited to work alongside other Amnesty researchers, investigating spyware, phishing scams and other kinds of digital attacks.
The aim? To uncover attacks targeting civil society, publish the findings and develop ways for civil society to protect themselves. The cybersecurity industry was focused on protecting corporates and there were few efforts to tackle the sophisticated threats some governments directed at human rights defenders”, stated the Amnesty International report.
So, the big question now is, why is the hacking of Delta State government officials a recurring decimal?
Can a lion be afraid of a dog? Are the hackers living and operating from another universe?
In this world of technology why is hard or too hard or impossible to track them even when the necessary information including bank details of victims duped, have been provided, so who is to be blamed or are we going to wait again for CPS, Festus Ahon to raise another alarm on the same subject matter?
Haba!