Osuta Yusuf

A Chinese hacking group has been found leveraging a new exploit chain in iOS devices to install a spyware implant targeting the Uyghur Muslim minority in China's autonomous region of Xinjiang. The findings, published by digital forensics firm Volexity, reveal that the exploit — named "Insomnia" — works against iOS versions 12.3, 12.3.1, and 12.3.2 using a flaw in WebKit that was patched by Apple with the release of iOS 12.4 in July 2019. Volexity said the attacks were carried out by a state-sponsored hacking group it calls Evil Eye, the same threat actor that it said was behind a series of attacks against the Uyghurs last September following a bombshell disclosure by Google's Project Zero team. Watering Holes Attacks Targeting Uyghur Websites The malware campaign previously exploited as many as 14 vulnerabilities spanning from iOS 10 all the way through iOS 12 over a period of at least two years via a small collection of malicious websites that were used a...

The Ugandan Shillings 10 Billionwas yesterday 21-April-2020 finally sent to Members of Parliament bank accounts a few minutes to Midday, moments before the court order was issued stopping the Parliamentary Commission from dispensing it to Legislators. We have been reliably informed that, MPs with accounts at Cairo International Bank, Centenary Bank and ABSA have already gotten notifications that UGX 20M has been credited on their accounts. Yesterday morning, Ntungamo Municipality MP, Gerald Karuhanga and Erute South legislator Jonathan Odur petitioned court seeking to halt the Parliamentary Commission from paying Shs 10 billion to MPs to fight Covid-19 epidemic. Hours later, the Civil court in Kampala issued an injunction stopping the Parliamentary Commission from dispensing the UGX 10B to Legislators. Karuhanga and Odur’so celebrations did not last long after learning that their court order was useless, Parliament, Accountant General and BoU had beaten them on the thread o...

Watch out Apple users! The default mail app pre-installed on millions of iPhone and iPad has been found vulnerable to two critical flaws that could let remote hackers secretly take complete control over Apple devices just by sending an email to targeted individuals. According to cybersecurity researchers at ZecOps, the vulnerabilities in question are out-of-bounds write and remote heap overflow issues, one of them is a dangerous ' zero-click ' flaw that can be exploited without requiring any interaction from the targeted recipients. Both remote code execution flaws reside in the MIME library of the mail app that can get triggered while processing the email content. These flaws existed for the last 8 years since the release of iOS 6 and also affect the latest iOS 13. What's more worrisome is that multiple groups of attackers are already exploiting these flaws—for at least 2 years as zero-days in the wild—to target individuals from various industries and organizations, MSSPs ...

#CORONAVIRUS_AWARENESS. The Civil Division of the High Court has ruled that the release of the controversial Shs 10bn to Members of Parliament be delayed until the hearing of the application challenging the allocation, scheduled for April 29. Two legislators – Gerald Karuhanga and Jonathan Odur – petitioned the Civil Division of the High Court seeking to block the Shs 10bn Parliament allocated itself from the Covid-19 supplementary budget. The legislators argue that Parliament was wrong and selfish to allocate money to themselves and that the Budget committee sneaked into the budget the allocation for Parliament. The legislators who are represented by A.F Mpanga and Company Advocates handed the petition to the High Court registrar Sarah Langa on Monday, April 20. Democratic Party leader Norbert Mao in a post on his facebook page said the MPs had earned themselves space on the wall of shame for their 10Bn ‘Cut’ off the Covid-19 Budget. Earlier, FDC’s Dr Kizza Besigye called ...

A newly discovered unpatchable hardware vulnerability in Xilinx programmable logic products could allow an attacker to break bitstream encryption, and clone intellectual property, change the functionality, and even implant hardware Trojans. The details of the attacks against Xilinx 7-Series and Virtex-6 Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have been covered in a paper titled "The Unpatchable Silicon: A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs" by a group of academics from the Horst Goertz Institute for IT Security and Max Planck Institute for Cyber Security and Privacy. "We exploit a design flaw which piecewise leaks the decrypted bitstream," the researchers said. "In the attack, the FPGA is used as a decryption oracle, while only access to a configuration interface is needed. The attack does not require any sophisticated tools and, depending on the target system, can potentially be launched remotely." The findings will...

Hon Ayaka Rose Atima, the Woman Member of Parliament for Maracha District, has in years now, been volunterily thriving auxiliary support for the Youths in terms of providing them with Basic Skills and Knowledge of how to make money. Fish Pond Project initiative, is one of the many other skills the Woman MP has been rendering for the People of Maracha to alleviate Poverty. During an interface we had in the beginning of March-2020 with the youth leaders of the pilot sites, we learnt that many groups are preparing their ponds to benefit from this venture with a lot of anxiety. Also on a Telephone Interview with One of the Fish Farmers in Maracha, it is disclosed that, each of the Fish Pond contains about 500 Immature Fish and if taken care properly for about Six Months, One mature Fish can weigh 3Kgs and above. Per the current Commodity Prices, One Kilogram of 🐟 Fish equals to 20,000 Shillings. To give a brief overview, 20,000 X 3 = 60,000 Shs (per fish). Then multiply Shilli...

COVID-Themed Lures Target SCADA Sectors With Data Stealing Malware. A new malware campaign has been found using coronavirus-themed lures to strike government and energy sectors in Azerbaijan with remote access trojans (RAT) capable of exfiltrating sensitive documents, keystrokes, passwords, and even images from the webcam. The targeted attacks employ Microsoft Word documents as droppers to deploy a previously unknown Python-based RAT dubbed "PoetRAT" due to various references to sonnets by English playwright William Shakespeare. "The RAT has all the standard features of this kind of malware, providing full control of the compromised system to the operation," said Cisco Talos in an analysis published last week. According to the researchers, the malware specifically targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems in the energy industry, such as wind turbine systems, whose identities are currently not known. The development is the latest in...

Hon Paulsen Luttamaguzi Ssemakula has written to the Speaker of Parliament instructing her to deduct some money off his monthly salary to aid efforts against Coronavirus. While appearing on a TV show over the weekend, Luttamaguzi said that it is time for everyone to stop playing politics and take measures that can genuinely fight the spread of the virus. Luttamaguzi assured the public that if legislators were sensitive, they would surrender part of their monthly salaries to the Ministry of Health. In fulfilment of his pledge, Luttamaguzi has thus written to the Speaker of Parliament in a letter dated March 24 calling for a deduction of Shs 2m from his monthly salary. “This letter comes to appreciate you for your work in Uganda’s efforts to effectively combat the Corona Virus. Most importantly though, I write to authorize your office to make a deduction of Shs 2m from my monthly salary to support victims of the above mentioned pandemic and to support the Ministry of Health t...

Americans regret flying out of Uganda as Covid-19 hits home hard.  Americans are proud of their country, the United States of America (USA), because over the centuries it has been in existence, the country has always regarded itself as a global super power, not only militarily, but in other areas such as; commerce, education, science, technology and health among others. And that is why when in December 2019 the highly infectious Coronavirus (Covid-19) broke out in China’s Wahun Province, the political leadership in USA took it as a mere flu that had defeated the Chinese health system. But at the same time, the USA saw it necessary to evacuate its nationals out of other countries they saw as being very weak to manage the fast-spreading pandemic that has now killed over 26,000 people in that country not withstanding over 600,000 cases registered to-date. Uganda, a poor country, was of course one of the countries from which USA evacuated its nationals thinking they would f...

18 APRIL 2020. The minister for Energy and mineral Development  Hon Mary Gorret Kitutu  has hailed UPDF Engineers  and UPDF marines  for their quick Response  to clear the floating  Island that  had docked  at Nalubale dam and affected power Generation  in the country. She said that she is impressed  that work which was Estimated  to 07 Days  is almost complete  within 03 days "I'm glad that this work  will be completed  in a short time  so that we Embark  on clearing the bigger Island floating towards  the dam 7KM Away  said the minister. She further said, the bigger floating  Island need to be docked   and uprooted using  a ferry to prevent  it from reaching the dam. She Attributed this problem  to Human Activity  that has Encroached  on lake shores  and the increa...

The United States agencies has released a joint advisory warning the world about the 'significant cyber threat' posed by North Korean state-sponsored hackers to the global banking and financial institutions. Besides a summary of recent cyberattacks attributed to North Korean hackers, the advisory—issued by U.S. Departments of State, the Treasury, and Homeland Security, and the FBI—also contains a comprehensive guide intends to help the international community, industries, and other governments defend against North Korea's illicit activities. "In particular, the United States is deeply concerned about North Korea's malicious cyber activities, which the U.S. government refers to as HIDDEN COBRA. The DPRK has the capability to conduct disruptive or destructive cyber activities affecting U.S. critical infrastructure," the advisory says. "The DPRK also uses cyber capabilities to steal from financial institutions, and has demonstrated a pattern of d...

  In regards to the 21 more added days on Covid-19 Lockdown Curfew ordered by President Museveni, the Woman MP for Maracha District, Hon Ayaka Rose Atima has urged Ugandans to embrace and be strong-hearted and faithful like the Biblical Moses and his Servants who trusted in Faith and eventually Succeeded in leading the Israelites to the promised Land, from the cruelly bloody territories of brutal King Pharaoh of Egypt. This being the Second Phase (21 Days) of Lockdown after the first Phase (14 Days Lockdown) elapsed, the continuation of these Lockdown Orders by President Museveni and the Solidarity Speech by Hon Rose have come at a time when Uganda has Registered 55 Positive Coronavirus Infection Cases and Global Infections of about 1,000,000 Positive Coronavirus Cases and over 100,000 total Deaths World Wide. Up on Hon Rose applausing HE Museveni, the MP unraveled the President as one of the best distinguished Presidents in Africa and around the World, who are designat...

As hospitals around the world are struggling to respond to the coronavirus crisis, cybercriminals—with no conscience and empathy—are continuously targeting healthcare organizations, research facilities, and other governmental organizations with ransomware and malicious information stealers. The new research, published by Palo Alto Networks, confirmed that "the threat actors who profit from cybercrime will go to any extent, including targeting organizations that are in the front lines and responding to the pandemic on a daily basis." While the security firm didn't name the latest victims, it said a Canadian government healthcare organization and a Canadian medical research university both suffered ransomware attacks, as criminal groups seek to exploit the crisis for financial gain. The attacks were detected between March 24 and March 26 and were initiated as part of the coronavirus-themed phishing campaigns that have become widespread in recent months. Palo Alt...

Members of the 10th Parliament (MPs) have each been earmarked a total of Shs 20m to help them fight the spread of COVID-19 in the country. It should be noted that last week Parliament passed a supplementary budget of Shs 304bn that was tendered in by government to help finance several activities in the fight against Corona virus. The supplementary budget was meant to cater for the activities under the emergency response to COVID-19 under several agencies including; Health (HQs, Referral Hospitals, District Hospitals, DMOs), Security (UPDF, Police, Prisons, ISO, ESO, Immigration), Local Government (RDCs and Districts), KCCA, Disaster preparedness/ Support to the vulnerable. Parliament however used its discretionally powers to make several reallocations of the funds and as such allocated a total of Shs10b to the institution of Parliament. While speaking during a television interview, the Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga justified the allocation of funds to Parliament and...

According to the Hon Minister for Investment and Privatisation, who is also the Koboko Municipality MP, tough times don't last but tough people do!!. ‪During this unprecedented #Covid19 lockdown, Allan & I would like to call upon all married Ugandans to resist the temptation of domestic violence & focus on loving each other more & spending time teaching good values to the children. The Minister believes that, Loyalty, Trustworthiness and remaining Loving to each other during this Covid-19 Lockdown would only further more cement confidence in the Heart of each other at the verge of plying through these difficult moments. #anite #osutayusuf

Cabinet has this afternoon extended the lockdown by three more weeks. According to cabinet sources, the Ministers had initially agreed on two weeks but later extended to three after seeing what was happening in the neighbourhood. “It was a heated debate with many colleagues arguing that extension of three weeks would inconvenience our people but we settled for three after what is happening in Kenya and Tanzania.” a cabinet minister. Adding “We all agreed that rather than having bodies on the street like Trump, we would rather have hungry and angry population”. The Eagle Online #osutayusuf

How to cook a simple, flavorful pot of beans and use it throughout the week. I’ve said — or written — it so many times, I long ago lost count. But here goes again: The key to quick-but-interesting weeknight cooking is to get in the habit of making building blocks on the weekend when you have time, and then learn to use them in a variety of ways during the week. As a vegetarian, I’m talking about roasting vegetables, steaming grains and, my favorite, simmering a pot of beans. Now that we’re spending so much time at home, you don’t have to wait until the weekend to do such cooking. But you should still do it, especially since beans have emerged as the shelf-stable, nutritious star players of the pandemic pantry. The Instant Pot may have been one of the best things to happen to dried beans in recent years, but now you don’t have to worry quite so much about how quickly beans can cook under pressure; you can give them the low-and-slow treatment they love. I’m perhaps better equ...

If you use Apple iPhone or MacBook, here we have a piece of alarming news for you. Turns out merely visiting a website — not just malicious but also legitimate sites unknowingly loading malicious ads as well — using Safari browser could have let remote attackers secretly access your device's camera, microphone, or location, and in some cases, saved passwords as well. Apple recently paid a $75,000 bounty reward to an ethical hacker, Ryan Pickren, who practically demonstrated the hack and helped the company patch a total of seven new vulnerabilities before any real attacker could take advantage of them. The fixes were issued in a series of updates to Safari spanning versions 13.0.5 (released January 28, 2020) and Safari 13.1 (published March 24, 2020). "If the malicious website wanted camera access, all it had to do was masquerade as a trusted video-conferencing website such as Skype or Zoom," Pickren said. When chained together, three of the reported Safari flaws could hav...

Over the past few weeks, the use of Zoom video conferencing software has exploded ever since it emerged the platform of choice to host everything from cabinet meetings to yoga classes amidst the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and work from home became the new normal. The app has skyrocketed to 200 million daily users from an average of 10 million in December — along with a 535 percent increase in daily traffic to its download page in the last month — but it's also seen a massive uptick in Zoom's problems, all of which stem from sloppy design practices and security implementations. Zoom may never have designed its product beyond enterprise chat initially, but with the app now being used in a myriad number of ways and by regular consumers, the company's full scope of gaffes have come into sharp focus — something it was able to avoid all this time.   But if this public scrutiny can make it a more secure product, it can only be a good thing in the long run. A Laundry ...

Tech giants Apple and Google have joined forces to develop an interoperable contract-tracing tool that will help individuals determine if they have come in contact with someone infected with COVID-19. As part of this new initiative, the companies are expected to release an API that public agencies can integrate into their apps. The next iteration will be a built-in system-level platform that uses Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons to allow for contact tracing on an opt-in basis. The APIs are expected to be available mid-May for Android and iOS, with the broader contact tracing system set to roll out "in the coming months." "Privacy, transparency, and consent are of utmost importance in this effort, and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders," the companies said. The rare collaboration comes as governments worldwide are increasingly turning to technology such as phone tracking and facial recognition to battle the v...

Greetings fellow Citizens and the World. I treasure this moment to screed some equivocations about a trending blackpainting against the security forces in Uganda. Prior to Observations, these Complaigns and brewing attacks on the security forces, outrage from Presidential Orders on Quarantine (Lockdown) issued by President Museveni over the Coronavirus pandemic in Uganda, which has so far infected over One Million People and has killed over 50000 People Globally. Depending on the View of a Life Saver, there would actually be no grudge against the Quarantine imposed by President Museveni. The Public nutshell exists on how Security Forces should implement Direct Orders. It is obvious to witness Citizens resisting and battling with Security Forces amidst implementation of Direct Orders in a Third-World Country, where majority of the Citizens are totally ignorant about their Laws of the Country. Per what is circulating, some Self-centered Politicians and some Individuals in the...