By Noelyn Tracy Nassuuna
International Peace Day has come and gone, but the mission of building and sustaining peace continues every single day, especially for human rights defenders (HRDs) around the world. These courageous individuals are often on the front lines, advocating for justice, equality, and human dignity in the face of adversity. Their work is crucial in addressing the root causes of conflict and promoting long-lasting peace.
By Helen Namyalo Kimbugwe and Noelyn Tracy Nassuuna
As Uganda heads toward a pivotal election season, the release of sensitive financial statements for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) like Chapter Four Uganda has sparked intense debate. These disclosures carry significant implications for donors, NGOs, and the public, shaping trust, transparency, and operational stability.
What does this mean for NGOs operating in Uganda, their donors, and the communities they serve? How can transparency be balanced with protection in such politically charged times?
To delve deeper into these issues, download the full article now and stay informed about the future of civil society in Uganda.
A week after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID 19 a global pandemic, Uganda registered its first case. A month later, the disease was widespread across the country, prompting the operationalization of WHO-recommended and Government-imposed emergency measures to contain the spread of the virus. These included partial and eventually total lockdowns, a ban on social gatherings of more than five people, the shutdown of public transport, air travel, and the closure of businesses except for vital sectors like food and health.
To ensure continuity of operations, NGOs, much like other businesses/organizations across the globe, had to heavily depend on digital tools to continue operations which led to the “Zoom-Era.” The era of working from home/remotely aided by digital applications like conferencing platforms like Zoom, which allows for up to 500 participants, voice, and video, messaging apps, and digital collaborative workspaces in the absence of offices and physical engagement.
For the highly tech-driven economies from the developed world, this transition was undoubtedly an inconvenient adjustment; unfortunately for developing countries like Uganda, with substantial deficiencies in ICT infrastructure, where only a sixth (1/6) of the population has access to the internet, and 36% of the non-internet users are digitally illiterate, it was nothing short of a catastrophe.
The Not-for-profit sector was one of those hardest hit by this transformation since the bulk of their work entails awareness and capacity building engagements, socio-civic advocacy/activism, community meetings, and outreach.
The Digital Security Alliance (DSA), a coordinated digital security support mechanism for human rights defenders, activists, and journalists in Uganda, that is led by Defenders Protection Initiative, with funding from the Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) under the African Digital Rights Fund, undertook the study, to Assessing the Levels of digital security risk to which Human Rights NGOs were Exposed to after the adoption of technology tools for business continuity during the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdowns in Uganda.
This study, therefore, sought to investigate the digital security risks associated with the adoption of technological tools given the human rights landscape in Uganda and against the backdrop of the COVID pandemic.
The main objective of the research was; To identify gaps and vulnerabilities that are exposing human rights organizations to digital security risks to develop strategies to build capacity to mitigate any future threats of cyber-attacks, privacy & data breaches.
The study targeted 50 NGOs across Uganda. To obtain comprehensive data sets, it necessitated the selection of respondents from both frontline officers involved in implementing day-to-day activities of human rights NGOs and critical decision-makers such as Executive Directors, Program Managers, Department Heads and Advocacy Officers.
Guided by the research questions; “Did the adoption of digital platforms expose NGO to any cybersecurity-related challenges? Was the adoption of digital platforms effective in NGOs’ business continuity?” we were able to obtain the following evidence.
The research revealed that 50% of the respondents were moderately exposed to digital security tools before the COVID 19 lockdown. Frontline offices pointed out that their work primarily constituted physical engagements with their partners and beneficiaries, which limited the number of tech tools and frequency. The most commonly used digital tools were voice conferencing call facilities, voice over internet services like Skype, digital collaboration tools like Google Suite, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Meet, and Google Docs. Social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. However, with the outbreak of COVID 19 and subsequent lockdown, NGOs had to adopt “new” ICT tools and depend on the ones already in use more heavily to ensure
business continuity. Respondents reported to have adopted video conferencing and collaboration platforms; Zoom, BlueJeans, Google Meet, Jitsi, KumoSpace, Microsoft Teams, and GoTo Meetings. These are mainly used to facilitate internal communication/conducting staff meetings (19%), communicate with participants (18%), conducting workshops (15%), communicating and liaising with donors (14%), and providing support to beneficiaries (14%).
Facilitating business continuity, increasing efficiency, improving time management, and other benefits of information and communication technology (ICT) mainstreaming notwithstanding, the adoption of tech tools was not without challenges. NGO heads reported internet interruptions as their biggest challenge. Interruptions were either unstable or, for the case of rural areas, non-existent networks—slow internet connections due to the minimal broadband coverage. 3G covers only 65% of the population, and LTE/4G covers only 17%.
NGO staff in urban areas with access to 4G speeds that could support data-intensive apps like video conferencing tools were affected by the high cost of data. Individuals reported having spent on average 127,500 UGX per month purchasing internet data packages—a stretch for most middle seized NGOs without an internet budget big enough to cover 127,000 worth of data for each staff.
The above interferences are compounded by frequent power cuts, which affect enabling ICT hardware and infrastructure such as the cell towers, desktops, MiFis, and modems.
Much like the COVID 19 pandemic, the adoption of tech tools and mainstreaming of ICT were novel. The timing and abrupt nature of the circumstances also did not allow for adequate preparation and training on using the digital tools and digital security concerns. These, therefore, paused unprecedented risks. 98% of the respondents reported having been exposed to some sort of digital security risk. Of the reported cases, we deduced that 52% of these were exposed to digital threats while using personal computers as opposed to the 48% who faced threats while using organization-provided computers.
It was inferred from the findings that the organizations whose works centres on social development, justice, law and order, health, education, ICT, and accountability reported digital threats more frequently. However, this comes as no surprise, especially in the Ugandan context, whose civic environment is marred by intimidation, torture, and killing of social justice leaders, illegal detentions and evictions, and a restrictive legal framework, among others. However, the research findings highlighted the varying degree in threat level exposure as experienced by different genders and reaffirmed the disproportionate impact of COVID 19 on women and children. This is evidenced by NGOs operating in the thematic area of Women’s rights and reporting the most frequent (26%) exposure to digital security risks from using technology tools adopted during COVID-19 lockdown.
Imagine someone has taken over your account, what would happen to you and the people who contact you on WhatsApp?
Just as it is easy to fresh install of WhatsApp for your new phone is also how easy an attacker would gain access to your WhatsApp and possibly start a conversation with your friends claiming it is you.
Most times, the direct risk is not to you if you’re attacked, but to your contacts. They can expect to receive requests for data or even emergency funds. This is social engineering at its best. We would trust an end-to-end encrypted platform, a message from a trusted friend and so are coded to have our guards down and rather feel pity in these circumstances.
The repercussions of this happening are beyond imagination. This can even further spread to more of your contacts having there WhatsApp accounts taken over.
With the account taken over, the attackers could then message contacts in the groups you are in as if from the account holder (you), as well as any other contacts whose WhatsApp messages were received after the take over. No legacy data is compromised. The target device remains untouched. WhatsApp has simply been ghosted onto an illegitimate device.
It is surprising how many people have not yet enabled the Two-step verification PIN in WhatsApp—almost everyone we have asked has yet to set it up. If you’re the same, then please take that minute and set it up now.
The Question now is, How do we prevent this from happening to you for the first time or again?
WhatsApp introduced a feature where you can set a PIN of your own choice and even an email address just in case you forget your PIN. The PIN is your own verification to confirm that it is you even after inputting the SMS verification so you do not otherwise have to share your PIN with anyone.
You can find this feature in your WhatsApp setting > Account > Two-step verification: There you will be prompted to enable your PIN and confirm it, then you will also be asked to type in an email address to use to recover your account in case you forget your PIN
A Strategic Emergency Response Initiative seeking to establish and coordinate a joint mechanism that offers effective emergency response solutions to the dynamic and complex HRDs security needs associated with the working environment in Uganda, especially during this COVID-19 Pandemic.
Cognizant that Uganda has registered some progress in managing the situation and infection rate, these achievements have not gone without a challenge. The majority of non-governmental organizations have had to adapt to the new normal of working from home according to the respective guidelines. Therefore, our civic effort to push back against human rights violations has been curtailed since all attempts to support affected HRDs, activists, and non-governmental organizations have been stifled by the hostile civic space’s attendant elements.
HRDs and individual activists who speak truth to power during this Pandemic are highly susceptible to physical and digital security attacks. These attacks include but are not limited to intimidation, arrest, torture, killings, withdrawal of operation license, defamation, freezing of bank accounts, office closure, computer and network surveillance, office break-ins, theft and confiscation of digital equipment, loss of information, denial of service attacks and internet censorship.
Despite such hostilities, there is a lack of an inclusive, well-coordinated, sustainable and effective emergency response system geared at security, safety, and protection of the HRDs/groups and the allies during this period. Albeit the availability of the several organizations and entities that support HRDs in such instances, a reasonable number of democracy activists within and out of the capital city have on various forums referred to the available emergence response system as ineffective, unsustainable, inaccessible, individualistic, to mention but a few.
We strongly believe that the current and post-pandemic period will require response through concerted effort. Thus, it is imperative to take stock of partner organizations’ possible roles as strategies for responding to any emerging issues.
Truth is, most of us have ever been a victim of phishing before and with the abundant resources online and trainings that we have so far had, we have become sort of immune to phishing.
Click here to as well look at our blog post about phishing and what you need to know
Our immunity against phishing has so far been boosted by e-mail service providers, mail gateways and even browsers that we use which has all embedded in their systems anti-phishing filters and malicious address scanners.
With all these above, cybercriminals are constantly inventing new, and refining old, circumvention methods. One such method is delayed phishing.
Delayed phishing is an attempt to lure a victim to a malicious or fake site using a technique known as Post-Delivery Weaponized URL.
“As the name suggests, the technique essentially replaces online content with a malicious version after the delivery of an e-mail linking to it. In other words, the potential victim receives an e-mail with a link that points either nowhere or to a legitimate resource that may already be compromised but that at that point has no malicious content. As a result, the message sails through any filters. The protection algorithms find the URL in the text, scan the linked site, see nothing dangerous there, and allow the message through.”
Effecting the malicious link
Attackers operate on the assumption that their victim is a normal worker who sleeps at night. Therefore, delayed phishing messages are sent after midnight (in the victim’s time zone), and become malicious a few hours later, closer to dawn.
If cybercriminals find a specific person to attack, they can study their victim’s daily routine and activate the malicious link depending on when that person checks mail.
Technology behind Delayed Phishing
For delayed phishing to be effective, hackers use at least one of these 2 common methods:
Although there is a third technology that is not so common which includes a randomized and short link where there is a probabilistic redirection. That is, the link has a 50% chance of leading to google.com and a 50% chance of opening a phishing site. The possibility of landing on a legitimate site apparently can confuse crawlers (programs for automatic information collection).
– Spotting & fighting Delayed Phishing
Ideally, there is need to prevent the phishing link from getting to the user, so rescanning the inbox would seem to be the best strategy.
In some cases, that is doable: for example, if your organization uses a Microsoft Exchange mail server. Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Exchange Server is also included in our Kaspersky Security for Mail Servers and Kaspersky Total Security for Business solutions.
In recent years, non-profit organisations (NPOs) around the world have faced operational and legal restrictions due to counter-terrorism regulations.
Defenders protection initiative is committed to re-enforcing the resilience of Human Rights Defenders against digital/cyber attacks. Following a survey to assess the digital security posture of civil society organisations in Uganda, DPI organised #DigiSecCon17; The Digital Security Conference 2017, themed, “Why should Civil Society in Uganda Worry” that was held in Kampala at the Serena Conference Centre, on the 8th of September 2017.
