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SERAP Challenges Buhari to Provide Agreement With Twitter

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Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to provide a copy of the agreement the federal government had with Twitter, social media company.

SERAP Challenges Buhari to Provide Agreement With Twitter

 

FG had on Wednesday, January 12, announced that it has reached an arrangement with the micro-blogging site to lift the ban it placed on its use in Nigeria on June 4, 2021.

Now, the organisation is calling on the President to use his good offices and leadership position to direct Mr Lai Mohammed, minister of Information and Culture, to provide it with a copy of the agreement recently signed with Twitter, and to widely publish the details of any such agreement.

SERAP also urged him to “direct Alhaji Lai Mohammed to clarify the manner and scope in which the agreement with Twitter will be enforced, including whether the agreement incorporates respect for human rights, consistent with the Nigerian Constitution 1999 [as amended] and international obligations.”

In a letter dated January 15, 2022, and signed by Kolawole Oluwadare, SERAP deputy director, the organization said: “Publishing the agreement would enable Nigerians to scrutinize it, seek legal remedies as appropriate, and ensure that the conditions for lifting the suspension of Twitter are not used as pretexts to suppress legitimate discourse.”

SERAP said: “Publishing the agreement with Twitter would also promote transparency, accountability, and help to mitigate threats to Nigerians’ rights online, as well as any interference with online privacy in ways that deter the exercise of freedom of opinion and expression.”

According to SERAP, “Nigerians are entitled to their constitutionally and internationally recognized human rights, such as the rights to freedom of expression, access to information, privacy, peaceful assembly, and association, as well as public participation both offline and online.”

“Any agreement with social media companies must meet constitutional and international requirements, including legality, necessity, proportionality, and legitimacy.

“This means that any conditions for lifting the suspension of Twitter must meet the requirements of regular legal processes and limit government discretion. Secretly agreed conditions will fail these fundamental requirements.

“The government has a duty to demonstrate that the conditions for lifting the suspension of Twitter would not threaten or violate the enjoyment of Nigerians’ human rights online and that the conditions are in pursuit of a legitimate goal in a democratic society.

“SERAP is concerned that the operation and enforcement of the agreement may be based on broadly worded restrictive laws, which may be used as pretexts to suppress legitimate discourse, interfere with online privacy, and deter the exercise of freedom of opinion and expression,” it also stated.

It added: “For example, the statement by the government announcing the lifting of the suspension of Twitter used overly broad terms and phrases like ‘prohibited publication’, ‘Nigerian laws’, ‘national culture and history’. These open-ended terms and phrases may be used to suppress the legitimate exercise of human rights online.

“Any agreement with social media companies must not be used as a ploy to tighten governmental control over access to the internet, monitor internet activity, or to increase online censorship and the capacity of the government to restrict legitimate online content, contrary to standards on freedom of expression and privacy.

“SERAP notes the interdependence of human rights, such as the importance of privacy as a gateway to freedom of expression.

“Section 39 of the Nigerian Constitution, article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantee the right to hold opinions without interference, and the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers and through any medium.

“The Nigerian Constitution and human rights treaties impose duties on your government to ensure enabling environments for freedom of expression, privacy rights, and other human rights, and to protect their exercise.”

SERAP noted that “While human rights law requires States to prohibit ‘advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence’, States must still satisfy the cumulative conditions of legality, necessity, proportionality and legitimacy in any agreement with social media companies.

“Your government has a legal obligation to promote universal Internet access, media diversity, and independence, as well as ensure that any agreements with Twitter and other social media companies are not used to impermissibly restrict these fundamental human rights.

“By the combined reading of the provisions of the Constitution of Nigeria, the Freedom of Information Act 2011, and human rights treaties to which Nigeria is a state party, there are transparency obligations imposed on your government to widely publish the agreement and details of the conditions upon which the suspension of Twitter was lifted.

“It is stated in the statement by the Federal Government that Twitter has reached an agreement with the government ‘to manage prohibited publication in line with Nigerian laws.’ We would be grateful for clarifications on the definition of ‘prohibited information,’ and the specific applicable Nigerian laws in the context of the agreement.

“It is also stated in the statement by the Federal Government that Twitter has agreed to ‘act with a respectful acknowledgement of Nigerian laws and the national culture and history on which such legislation has been built.’ We would be grateful for clarifications on the specific and applicable Nigerian laws, national culture, and history upon which the operation and enforcement of the agreement will be based.

“We would be grateful if the requested information and details are provided to us within 7 days of the receipt and/or publication of this letter. If we have not heard from you by then, SERAP shall take all appropriate legal action in the public interest to compel your government to comply with our request.

“According to our information, the approval was given to lift the suspension of Twitter operation in Nigeria effective from 12 am 13th January 2022 following the memo sent to you by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Ali Ibrahim. The decision to lift the suspension was reportedly based on the recommendations by the Technical Committee on Nigeria-Twitter Engagement.

“SERAP notes that Alhaji Lai Mohammed on 5th June 2021, announced the suspension of operation of Twitter by the Federal Government, following which a seven-man Presidential Committee was set up to engage Twitter Inc. The Presidential Committee, in turn, established a 20-member Technical Committee, which reportedly directly worked with the Twitter team.”

The letter was copied to Mr Lai Mohammed and Mr Abubakar Malami, SAN, Attorney General of the Federation, and Minister of Justice.


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E-Business

Kaspersky Identifies New Stealthy Ransomware

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Kaspersky’s Global Emergency Response Team has identified a previously unseen ransomware strain in active use, deployed in an attack following the theft of employee credentials.

The ransomware, dubbed “Ymir”, employs advanced stealth and encryption methods. It also selectively targets files and attempts to evade detection.

Ymir ransomware introduces a unique combination of technical features and tactics that enhance its effectiveness.

Uncommon memory manipulation techniques for stealth. Threat actors leveraged an unconventional blend of memory management functions – malloc, memmove, and memcmp – to execute malicious code directly in the memory.

This approach deviates from the typical sequential execution flow seen in widespread ransomware types, enhancing its stealth capabilities. Furthermore, Ymir is flexible; by using the –path command, attackers can specify a directory where the ransomware should search for files.

If a file is on the whitelist, the ransomware will skip it and leave it unencrypted. This feature gives attackers more control over what is or isn’t encrypted.

Use of data-stealing malware. In the attack observed by Kaspersky experts, which took place on an organisation in Colombia, threat actors were observed using RustyStealer, a type of malware that steals information, to obtain corporate credentials from employees.

These were then utilised to gain access to the organisation’s systems and maintain control long enough to deploy ransomware. This type of attack is known as initial access brokerage, where attackers infiltrate systems and sustain access.

Typically, initial access brokers sell the access they gain on the dark web to other cybercriminals, but in this case, they appear to have continued the attack themselves by deploying ransomware.

“If the brokers are indeed the same actors who deployed the ransomware, this could signal a new trend, creating additional hijacking options without relying on traditional Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) groups,” explains Cristian Souza, Incident Response Specialist at Kaspersky Global Emergency Response Team.

Advanced encryption algorithm. The ransomware employs ChaCha20, a modern stream cipher known for its speed and security, even outperforming Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

Although the threat actor behind this attack has not shared any stolen data publicly or made further demands, researchers are closely monitoring it for any new activity. “We haven’t observed any new ransomware groups emerging in the underground market yet.

Typically, attackers use shadow forums or portals to leak information as a way to pressure victims into paying the ransom, which is not the case with Ymir. Given this, the question of which group is behind the ransomware remains open, and we suspect this may be a new campaign,” elaborates Souza.

Looking for a name for the new threat, Kaspersky experts considered a Saturnian moon called Ymir. It is an “irregular” moon that travels in the opposite direction of the planet’s rotation – a trait that intriguingly resembles the unconventional blend of memory management functions used in the new ransomware.

 


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Nigeria, Ghana Africa’s Digital Hubs Hardest Hit by Cyber Attacks – Report

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Nigeria, a major digital hub in Africa, has one of the highest volume of cyberattacks in West Africa, coming in at 2,721 for the first half of 2024.

Nigeria, Ghana Africa’s Digital Hubs Hardest Hit by Cyber Attacks - Report

Attacks on the computer-related services field were prevalent, as in Ghana, with 867 incidents, but local beauty salons were second on the list for Nigeria, enduring 206 incidents, followed by data processing hosting companies at 116.

“The growing complexity of distributed denial of service (DDoS) threats seen worldwide, including a notable increase in both attack frequency and sophistication, is clearly reflected in Nigeria. The country experienced more complex attacks than others within the region, with 23 different attacks vendors seen in one single attack, from TCP and CLDAP (Connection-less Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) attacks to Domain Name System (DNS) amplification and many more,” Bryan Hamman, regional director for Africa at NETSCOUT, adding that the country stood out third on the list.

Ghana, however, led the region in both the frequency and diversity of cyber threats for the first half of 2024, facing a high volume of DDoS attacks directed at industries including computer services and telecommunications.

In fact, according to NETSCOUT’s 1H2024 DDoS Threat Intelligence Report (TIR), the country was subjected to a total of 4,753 attacks over the six months, of which 2,759 were aimed at computer-related services businesses. Wireless telecommunications carriers (except satellite) received the second highest number of attacks, at 110, with full-service restaurants also noted as another vertical industry under fire. Furthermore, Ghana experienced by far the highest volume attack in West Africa, with the maximum bandwidth of its largest DDoS attack measuring 314.25 Mbps.

Known for an economic resilience that is driven by agriculture and mining, Guinea surprisingly took second spot in the NETSCOUT results for West Africa in terms of attack frequency, with 2,918 incidents listed. Wireless telecommunications carriers bore the brunt of these strikes, which were mostly TCP-type attacks.

Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia both faced similar attack frequencies, with 1,598 and 1,515 incidents noted respectively. The two countries also experienced similarities in the types of attacks vectors used – mostly TCP-related – as well as the sector that was hardest hit, which was wireless telecommunications for both.

Again, wireless telecommunications carriers were identified as the prime targets for threat actors in Benin (196 incidents), Senegal (107), Mali (32) and Cameroon (16).

“This is in line with NETSCOUT’s global Threat Intelligence Report figures, which measured attacks on the sector at 834,471 for the first part of 2024, a substantial 34 per cent increase on the figures seen for 2H 2023, which was calculated at 622,295. We believe this points to an objective by cybercriminals to disrupt critical communication infrastructure,” Hamman said.

 

 


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NITDA Invites Public Input on Guidelines for IT Projects and Regulatory Instruments

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The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) is seeking public feedback on several draft documents related to Information Technology (IT) projects and regulations. This aligns with NITDA’s commitment to an open and collaborative rulemaking.

The legal Documents Open for Public Review are:

  1. Guidelines for Licensing IT Projects Clearance Compliance Assurance Firms 2024;
  2. Regulatory Guidelines for Electronic Invoicing in Nigeria;
  3. Guidelines for Software Development; and
  4. Guidelines for Software Testing.

NITDA is also proposing the amendment of the Guidelines for Clearance of IT Projects for Federal Public Institutions (FPIs). guidelines, initially issued in 2018.

The Guidelines for Licensing IT Projects Clearance Compliance Assurance Firms 2024 aims to ensure that IT projects within Federal Public Institutions (FPIs) are managed and implemented according to approved and established standards, regulations, and best practices.

The instrument will regulate and professionalise the clearance of IT projects, ensuring that FPIs IT projects and initiatives are effectively conceptualised, designed, evaluated, and compliant with relevant Federal Government extant rules and standards in line with the Federal Government’s digital infrastructure goals and the Renewed Hope Agenda.

The Regulatory Guidelines for Electronic Invoicing is designed to promote transparency and deepen the use of technology for e-government automation as well as support the fiscal development of Nigeria through prudent administration of government revenue.

The guidelines will improve tax compliance, enhance efficiency and enhance standardisation and interoperability, thereby ensuring that Nigeria is ready for international digital commerce.

The Guidelines for Software Development establishes the minimum requirements for the development of software to be used by Nigerian government entities. It ensures that all software meets quality, security, and operational standards, promotes the growth of the local software testing market, and enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of government services.

The objectives of the guideline are to ensure that software is fit-for-purpose, meeting functional and non-functional requirements, and protect government institutions from operational risks through security, reliability, and performance standards.

To Participate:

These draft documents have undergone internal review and stakeholder consultations. NITDA now invites the public to contribute their feedback by reviewing the documents available for download at: https://nitda.gov.ng/draft-regulatory-instruments/

Public participation is crucial for NITDA to develop comprehensive and effective regulatory instruments.

By considering diverse perspectives, NITDA can ensure these guidelines best serve the needs of the IT industry and promote the development of a thriving digital economy in Nigeria.

Stakeholders are advised to  send in their review to [email protected] on or before 26th November 2024.

 


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