One of the cyber crime investigators creeds is that “no cyber criminal is too smart to leave no digital traces.” Smart thieves leave few traces. But there will always be something to link the crime to a suspect. And that is how a cyber-crime investigator established the name and mobile number of the suspect and gave the information to Uganda Police, who then obtained a court order for a call log printout from the telecom company. Together with the email header information, the physical location of the suspect’s office was established. With a search warrant, police visited the suspect’s offices…

Whether you access the Internet on your mobile phone, tablet or computer, you are exposed to cyber criminals. They are lurking on-line, searching for the next prey. From a technology perspective, there is no one who is 100% safe from a motivated cyber criminal. Technology changes so fast that what is tested and found as ‘water tight system’ today in terms of security (confidentiality, availability and integrity), will have an exploitable vulnerability the following day even before the system vendor discovers it, also called zero-day exploits. If that was not the case, there would be no new updates that are…

Whether you access the Internet on your mobile phone, tablet or computer, you are exposed to cyber criminals. They are lurking on-line, searching for the next prey. From a technology perspective, there is no one who is 100% safe from a motivated cybercriminal. Technology changes so fast that what is tested and found as ‘water tight system’ today in terms of security (confidentiality, availability and integrity), will have an exploitable vulnerability the following day even before the system vendor discovers it, also called zero-day exploits. If that was not the case, there would be no new updates that are always…

ATM Fraud and how bank clients can protect themselves against fraud The issue On 14th Oct 2015, Centenary Bank’s managing director Fabian Kasi issued a statement in respect to the 25 complaints received by the bank from her customers over inconsistencies in their account balances in the bank. This was after a system upgrade. The bank decided to block all customer ATM PINs and requested the customers that want to withdraw over the ATM platform to first reset their ATM PINs. This exercise is currently at all their 63 branches. The bank also instituted cash withdrawal limits to Ugx. 100,000.…

Threats are rising rapidly. But the number of experts working to proactively fight attacks isn’t. BY MUSTAPHA B. MUGISA. Ring. Ring. You are woken up by early morning call from your IT manager with the dreaded news that the bank was robbed during the night. Worried, you ask: “How many people are dead.” None. Did they break through the basement door? No. Where did they pass? “I am here with the Manager, we are also not sure where they passed?” How much has the bank lost? We are not yet sure, but I am afraid, it could be more than…

Institute of Forensics and ICT Security in partnership with Summit Consulting Ltd is organizing the 1st Annual Cyber Security and Risk Management Conference.What has so far changed in the cyber security landscape? We are organizing the 1st Annual Cyber Security and Risk Management (CSRM) conference because a lot has changed in the cyber space. We need a conversation with leaders across board on how to proactively anticipate and manage risk which is attendant to automation. We are dealing in an era of artificial intelligence, bigdata and advanced analytics. So if you are not able to go deep into that area as a…