Online abuse in Kenya up by 1155% according to CA report

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) says that online abuse in Kenya is up by 1155% in a recently released Q1 2018 Sector Statistics Report.

This is such a massive increase but not shocking to online natives. If you have been living online over the past year, you may have experienced venom from some users or come across numerous victims. One of the reasons could be because tolerance for other peoples’ preferences and way of life is especially at an all-time low. Also, a good number of Kenyans do not embrace differences in opinion or diversity in its various forms.

Online abuse comes in many forms and the communications body has considered several of them in the report.

The stats

The first section focusses on the National Cyber Threat Landscape. The National KE-CIRT/CC reports having detected over 7.9 million cyber threats, a 25% drop compared to the previous quarter.

The most interesting finding under the various forms of cyber threats detected is the rise of online abuse in the time frame the data was collected. According to CA, online abuse has increased by 1155% compared to last quarter which recorded 1757 cases. This is quite a significant difference.

During this quarter, the National KE-CIRT/CC reported 3,488 cases. Of these, online abuse took the biggest share with 1737 cases up from 99 in the last quarter. This was a 1654.5% increase.

The other forms of attacks showed a decrease or increase when compared to previous quarters. Malware was down by 27.8%, Web application attacks were up by almost 2%, botnet attacks decreased by 36%, system misconfiguration was down by 5% and online impersonations were down by a massive 77%.

The report also revealed the topmost targeted service ports when unscrupulous identities targeted file sharing, web services or voice over IP (VoIP) applications. These include:

• Port 445 which is Microsoft Directory Services that is used for sharing files in Windows
• Port 80 (HTTP)
• Port 5060 (Session Initiation Protocol) that is used for signaling and controlling multimedia sessions like VoIP and Chat
• Port 22 (Secure Shell) that is used for securely connecting to remote machines on the same or different network
• Port 23 (Telnet) that allows a user on one computer to log onto another computer on the same or different network.

Here is another interesting bit:

The report indicates that some companies still use easy to guess passwords and usernames. It’s  2018 and that means a strong password is the easiest step to securing yourself online.

Below are examples of easily targeted usernames and passwords and their instances.

Usernames

1. root (2011)
2. user (1141)
3. usuario (81)
4. test (51)
5. guest (46)
6. ftpuser (40)
7. support (31)
8. postfix (26)
9. postgres (25)
10. hadoop (20)

Passwords

1. admin (209)
2. 1234 (165)
3. password (197)
4. 12345 (143)
5. Root (97)
6. Ubnt (102)
7. 123456 (138)
8. default (99)
9. 0000 (102)
10. admin123 (73)

Online abuse is a silent killer and if we perceive these statistics as just numbers, we will have ourselves to blame soon. The rise in online abuse cases has been blamed on technological advancement and while this is a valid reason, people need to be aware of what they need to do to prevent online abuse or avoid falling victims to this vice. The cybercrimes law should not be just a familiarity.