Online media outlet seeks police assistance for Cyber attacks

Feb 24, 2015 News

– Local IT specialist suggests cooperation between public, private sectors

Rabindra Rooplall

A local online news outfit, which has been experiencing persistent cyber attacks, is calling on the Guyana Police Force to investigate the attacks on the online media.
“ We call on the law enforcement as well as the media fraternity to investigate and condemn this modern day type of attack on press freedom…This online news service will also be engaging specialized external assistance to combat this methodical cyber threat on our service.”
The online media agency stated in a press release, recently. “Our technicians have identified IP addresses linked to local subscribers who are being supplied internet service by a local telephone operator. We approached the telephone company and supplied the suspicious IP addresses. The telephone operator has since advised that the matter be reported to the Guyana Police Force.”
The management of Kaieteur News is examining legal options after several instances of its website coming under attack in recent weeks. The cyber attacks come at a time when General Elections are to be held on May 11 and when the website, www.kaieteurnewsonline.com, has been showing significant increases in online readership in recent times. It is the most visited website in the country.
Many companies in Guyana have yet to take seriously the threat posed by cyber attack. This is despite signs that locally and regionally, many have experienced internet breaches where hackers cause havoc leading to fraud, defamation and disruption of online processes.
When hackers gain access to your computer, they can see everything. Since much of the personal, professional and financial parts of our lives have moved online, we risk losing much more than money or information. Because of the Internet, privacy is limited, usually by choice. A hacker with access to your email, social networking accounts and personal photos can very quickly destroy that privacy, the entity said.
Whatever the reason, cyber attacks and hacking cause damage to the computing devices of individuals and businesses, sometimes resulting in millions of dollars lost. According to a local Information Technology specialist, if cyber attackers continue to get better more quickly than defenders, as is presently the case, this could result in a ‘cyber backlash’ which decelerates digitization.
The asymmetric effect of a small number of successful attackers, leading to tighter Government restrictions, could mean that the biggest technology risk that organizations face is the theft of information assets and the disruption of online processes.
Many are not immune to the actions of those who use the Internet to breach national security, undertake criminal activity or behave maliciously.
Typically, in such an intrusion, the attacker tries to prevent legitimate users from accessing or utilising a particular service by launching a flood of traffic from multiple points in a manner that slows speeds or brings a system down.
A large numbers of customers experienced degradation in their broadband service as a result of the attack on the company’s Internet infrastructure from an external source.
What is required, a local IT specialist suggests, is the development of a modern view of cooperation between the public and private sectors, since the latter owned and operated most of the information infrastructure within the country.
Unfortunately, while legal redress may be talked about, few Caribbean jurisdictions have the necessary legislation, regulations or infrastructure to address cybercrimes and making it punishable to violate a network.
The Caribbean has become so focused on ensuring Internet access and improved connectivity, that the region has not placed the same level of effort on implementing systems to protect networks and information. They argue that what is required is a Caribbean Internet governance policy framework.
It is also far from clear whether local law-enforcement agencies have the legal cover to cooperate with external government agencies in this area, given that most cybercrimes are extraterritorial in their effect.
According to Internet World Stats, some 28.7 per cent of the Caribbean population now uses the Internet or some 11.9 million users out of a total Caribbean population of 41.4 million people.
These high usage figures are paralleled by the number of cell phones with some statistics suggesting that mobile-phone use in the Caribbean now approaches 70 per cent of the population and significant numbers for usage of social media such as Twitter and Facebook with a parallel growth in apps, some of which may eventually be linked to banking and commercial translations.
All of this is a very good reason to emphasise the need to give cyber security and cybercrime much greater national and regional attention.