PalmPay, a Nigerian leading digital banking platform, supported the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) during its Cybersecurity Awareness Walk held in Abuja as part of activities marking the 2025 Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Themed “Secure Our World,” the event brought together key stakeholders from law enforcement, regulatory bodies, and the private sector to promote public awareness on cybersecurity, financial fraud prevention, and safe online practices.

PalmPay joined other participants in advocating for stronger public vigilance and safer digital engagement, reaffirming its commitment to supporting national efforts that enhance cybersecurity and consumer protection.

Speaking during the event, PalmPay’s Managing Director, Mr Chika Reginald Nwosu, commended the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) for its efforts in combating cybercrime and protecting consumers. He emphasised the need for continued collaboration across sectors to build a safe and secure payment ecosystem for all Nigerians.

“We commend the NPF-NCCC for its proactive leadership in driving cybersecurity awareness,” said Nwosu. “At PalmPay, we are committed to supporting initiatives that promote digital safety and foster trust in Nigeria’s growing digital economy.”

At the event, PalmPay was commended for its outstanding efforts in strengthening regulatory engagement and advancing consumer protection initiatives across the fintech industry.

The partnership underscores PalmPay’s ongoing commitment to promoting cybersecurity awareness, consumer protection, and fraud prevention as part of its mission to create a safer digital financial ecosystem in Nigeria.

PalmPay is a leading digital banking platform driving financial inclusion and economic empowerment in underserved emerging markets. Through its secure, user-friendly, and inclusive suite of financial services, PalmPay empowers individuals and businesses with tools to manage and grow their money.

PalmPay offers a comprehensive range of products, including mobile payments, savings, and micro-insurance via its app and mobile money agent network.

Non-profit think tank and research network Research ICT Africa (RIA) has developed the Just AI Framework of Inquiry. The contextually-grounded and action-oriented position paper aims to help African policymakers, researchers and technologists navigate the complexities of developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Developed by RIA executive director Pria Chetty and RIA deputy director Dr Araba Sey, as part of the second phase of the Africa Just AI project, the framework responds to the urgent need to ground AI policy in Africa’s historical and contemporary contexts.

As AI technologies proliferate across every sector of society, the Just AI Framework of Inquiry reframes global debates on ethics and fairness by centring justice as the fundamental quality AI systems must embody, according to RIA.

Rather than replicating governance models designed for high-income economies, the framework calls for an approach that reflects Africa’s diverse democratic systems, development priorities and epistemic traditions, it says.

Through nine interrelated inquiries, from structural inequality and data justice, to democratic governance and environmental sustainability, the Just AI Framework of Inquiry equips policymakers, technologists and researchers with the tools to design and evaluate AI systems that actively promote equity, inclusion and care.

“The framework’s justice-oriented lens connects human rights, ecology and economy, guiding both research and regulatory reform to ensure AI advances public interest outcomes. It aims to move beyond aspirational ethics toward actionable mechanisms for embedding justice across the AI value chain,” notes Dr Sey.

The framework provides a holistic and multidisciplinary approach, moving beyond a narrow focus on technological risk to examine the interplay of AI with sustainable development, security, economic policy and governance.

“It recognises that effective AI governance requires a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on expertise in law, data science, economics and social sciences. This is crucial for developing integrated economic policies and governance frameworks that can address the full spectrum of AI’s societal consequences from labour market transformations to the regulation of intellectual property and competition,” Dr Sey adds.

The next phase of this project will test the framework’s application through participatory engagements with policymakers, civil society and research partners.

According to RIA, tech regulation, when developed through a justice-oriented lens, has the potential to unleash the developmental benefits of advanced innovation. Likewise, when AI systems are governed through justice-oriented frameworks, they can deliver equitable outcomes across diverse societies.

Yet, RIA is of the view that the dominant approaches to AI governance today − anchored in ethics, fairness and responsibility − remain inadequate. They are largely self-regulatory, driven by Global North actors, and designed for high-income countries with vastly different social, political and infrastructural realities. RIA’s research shows these frameworks often fail to recognise the uneven socio-economic contexts that shape life across the African continent.

“We have spent the past three years engaging deeply with this challenge: asking what it means to govern AI in ways that are truly just for Africa,” Chetty explains.

“We see a pressing need for a more deliberate and contextualised approach to AI governance; one that allows African countries to shift from being mere consumers of AI tech, to becoming co-creators of AI systems that reflect our development priorities, democratic values and lived experiences.

“Justice in AI requires more than inclusive aspirations. It demands redress of historical harms and inequities, attention to extractive data and value flows, and a commitment to ensuring that AI’s transformative potential is shared, not concentrated.”

At the Security Analyst Summit in Thailand, Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) unveiled the latest BlueNoroff APT activity through two highly targeted malicious campaigns ‘GhostCall’ and ‘GhostHire’. The ongoing operations have been targeting Web3 and cryptocurrency organisations across India, Turkiye, Australia and other countries in Europe and Asia since at least April 2025.

BlueNoroff, a subdivision of the notorious Lazarus group, continues to expand its signature ‘SnatchCrypto’ campaign, a financially motivated operation which targets crypto industries worldwide. The newly described GhostCall and GhostHire campaigns employ new infiltration techniques and customised malware to compromise blockchain developers and executives. These attacks affect macOS and Windows systems as primary targets and are managed through a unified command-and-control infrastructure.

The GhostCall campaign focuses on macOS devices, beginning with a highly sophisticated and personalised social engineering attack. The attackers reach out via Telegram, impersonating venture capitalists and in some cases using compromised accounts of real entrepreneurs and startup founders to promote investment or partnership opportunities. The victims are invited to fake investment meetings on phishing sites mimicking Zoom or Microsoft Teams during which they are prompted to “update” their client to fix an audio issue, this action downloads a malicious script and deploys a malware infection on the device.

“This campaign relied on deliberate and carefully planned deception. Attackers replayed videos of previous victims during staged meetings to make the interaction appear like a real call and manipulate new targets. The data collected in this process is then used not only against the initial victim but also exploited to enable subsequent and supply-chain attacks, leveraging established trust relationships to compromise a broader range of organisations and users,” comments Sojun Ryu, security researcher at Kaspersky GReAT.

Attackers deployed seven multi-stage execution chains, four which were previously unseen, to distribute a range of new customised payloads, including crypto stealers, browser credential stealers, secrets stealer, and Telegram credential stealers.

In the GhostHire campaign the APT targets blockchain developers by posing as recruiters. Victims are tricked into downloading and running a GitHub repository containing malware, presented as a skill assessment. GhostHire shares its infrastructure and tools with the GhostCall campaign, but instead of using video calls, it focuses on approaching hands-on developers and engineers through fake recruitment. After initial contact, victims are added to a Telegram bot that delivers either a ZIP file or a GitHub link, along with a short deadline to complete the task. Once executed, the malware installs itself on the victim’s machine, customised for the operating system.

The use of generative AI has enabled BlueNoroff to accelerate malware development and refine its attack techniques. The attackers introduced new programming languages and added additional features, complicating detection and analysis tasks. It further enables the actor to manage and expand its operations, increasing both the complexity and scale of attacks.

“Since its previous campaigns, the threat actor’s targeting strategy has evolved beyond simple cryptocurrency and browser credential theft. The use of generative AI has significantly accelerated this process, enabling easier malware development with reduced operational overhead.

“This AI-driven approach helps to fill the gaps in available information, enabling more focused targeting. By combining compromised data with AI’s analytical capabilities, the scope of these attacks has expanded. We hope our research will contribute to preventing further harm,” comments Omar Amin, senior security researcher at Kaspersky GReAT.