Cyber criminality: cameroonian media men in danger

According to the National Agency for Information Technologies and Communication (ANTIC), Cameroon has suffered 12,800 attacks related to cybercrime in 2017.

March 11, 2015, the website of the Presidency of the Republic of Cameroon is hacked. A cliché shows President Paul Biya bowed to 38 coffins of soldiers killed in the fight against Boko Haram, in the north of the country. Issa Tchiroma Bakary Minister of Communication speaks through a denial where he said that this publication “is the result of a crude photo montage that is the work of a hacker broke into the said site …”, according to actucameroun.com of March 13, 2015. Recently, on January 25, 2017, the website of the Ministry of Higher Education is also hacked by a group called Cameroon cyber force (CCF). And that’s not all. Accounts of public figures are pirated, private images and videos divulged to the public, diverted bank codes. Cybercrime is growing in Cameroon. Just through a simple click on a link or on a web page, the private information of a user can be stolen for malicious purposes. These few examples show how quickly the situation can become worryingly large over the territory.

Recently, the new target of these hackers are journalists. Every day a little more, the journalists integrate the field of digital as support of publication of information. In Cameroon, although the penetration rate of New Information and Communication Technologies (NTIC) is close to 1%, cases of piracy of personal data are felt by regular computer users: “We had everything taken as personal and professional information in my machine, even photos or I was painting my beard, besides that, all my confidential information on the article that I wrote was also stolen, until now I do not know for what purpose “said Edward Nkolo, freelancer. Like him, many media men are stealing valuable information endangering the life of their source and that of the journalist. Faced with such attacks, the professional secrecy is seriously threatened: “since I work, it is difficult for me to leave some data in my machine because I do not know who looks at them in my absence in the computer “Paule Aime Mbock, cameraman journalist in a television channel of the place. Like him, many reporters and aides to the journalist profession live in psychosis to be hacked.

Faced with this factor, measures have been taken by the government to limit the action of cybercrime. In the words collected on the online site actucameroun.com, two cyber security laboratories were set up two years ago at the Directorate of the Judicial Police of the General Delegation for National Security and the National Higher School.

Polytechnique of Yaounde, in charge of the digital investigations. The establishment of surveillance networks and video surveillance of the territory within the competent administrations, responsible for public safety. Seminars for the sensitization of the populations in general and the constituted bodies to know the magistrates are also initiated by the ANTIC to reduce considerably the number of victims of the hackers.

@Brenda Ngoufack