Spammed by Russia
I logged in to the admin section of this website to discover that i had been spammed (SQL Injection Hacks) into yet another tiring routine of deleting comments and lose 20 more minutes of my life carefully perusing through spam and actual comments.
Spam is increasingly becoming a huge expense and burden on almost anyone who uses the internet to check mail or communicate.
Assuming i earn $15 for every hour of productivity. It means i am loosing 1/3 of $15 = $5 every day which translates to a whopping $150 every month due to useless spam.
If a company has 200 people that rely on email that translates to $30,000 monthly loss and an unbelievable $460,000 lost to spam.
The estimate is even worse if we take a country which has conservatively 100 companies with over 200 people employed as staff who face this problem. In this case the country looses $46,000,000 roughly Kshs 3.7 billion to such spam attacks.
Such figures should immediately prompt the Kenyan government to set up safe guards that protect Kenyan websites and servers from Spam traffic that originates mostly from Russian/Siberian servers. This should be a project for the Communications Commission of Kenya and National Security Intelligence Service Cyber War unit.
This country is in a de facto state of war for which its security agencies are inadequately prepared. In the past 6 months the following websites have been hacked.
- StateHouse.co.ke which is the Presidents personal website.
- Capitalfm.co.ke which is one of Kenya’s leading websites.
- EquityBank.co.ke which was cloned by Nigerian scammers [See Proof]
Rumour has it that the most famous hack was in 2008 when the Department of Defence was attempting to transfer money to Ukrainian arms dealers over unsecured protocols (specifically http) when the money (in Billions) got intercepted by Russian hackers who presumably proceeded to have to largest party ever courtesy of Kenyan tax payers.
Hackers are having a field day in this country its time we got organized.
this fibre optics is both a blessing and a curse. i guess that i will have to be changing all my passwords more frequently and get on of those password protecting software or something. imagine losing a whole internet business to these people??
You are right Kenyantykoon these hackers are giving me loads of work to do. As a country we have to increase our capacity to deal with them.
I think you guys need to install better spam software, unless there is some internet stuff I don’t about.
I doubt really much the government cares about anyone’s servers.
I have already installed a spam filter doesnt seem to be working. Even the best filters require that you manage spam hence wasting time and saving manhours.
The government to be fair is doing some things but it needs to do more.
SPAM is TOTALLY different than hacking.
Why must everything be a gov’t solution. You think laws in Kenya will stop the spammers in the US (where the massive majority of SPAM originates) or emails from Nigeria trying to SCAM u?
It takes good education, buying (with your own money) a good spam filter for email and your web site and other similar things.
Thanks Zulu for your contribution however i believe you missed the point of my article. In countries like Kenya Government holds about 60% of the national resources and therefore has a responsibility to secure the country at every level including cyberspace. This should be done through both policy and using technology to reduce the impact of this problem.
SPAM SQL inserts are considered hacks because the succesfully manipulate the database product end.
Am also experiencing too much hacking in my blogs until am now not sure whether it is my fault or that of the hosting company
@gachie make sure you install a spam filter that should trap the spam for you. Yes many hosting companies do not adequately secure their servers so that can be an issue.
Gotta love the effort you put into this blog