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Financial Gazette second Zimbabwe paper to be hit by hackers
NewZimbabwe.com (UK)
May 15, 2008

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/ciogate35.18201.html

Hackers targeted a second newspaper in Zimbabwe on Wednesday, barely a week after the state-run Herald daily admitted its security had been breached. The Financial Gazette, a business weekly whose ownership is contentious, was set to update its website on Thursday when the print newspaper is published, but it appeared to have been hit by hackers overnight as news headlines were wiped off and replaced with the popular opposition slogan: 'Mugabe must go! Free Zim'. When hackers breached the security of the Herald, they replaced all news headlines with 'Gukurahundi' - the code name of a post-independence crackdown on opposition supporters in the south-western parts of the country by a private army set up by President Robert Mugabe which human rights groups say left 20 000 civilians dead.

No-one has claimed responsibility for hacking the Herald, or the latest incident. But Zimbabwean pro-democracy activists, meeting on Internet chatrooms, have been devising strategies to "jam Zanu PF communications", and actively calling for action against the state media which is accused of political bias. The Financial Gazette is thought to be owned by the country's central bank governor Gideon Gono, a key ally of President Robert Mugabe. Its take-over was reported to have been driven by the country's spy agency, the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO). The Herald, in a story published after the security breach, said it had been "sabotaged". The paper did not explain how - clearly embarrassed by the content of the breach. The Herald said it believed the hackers were "operating outside Zimbabwe", adding that they had "managed to get through security systems on both the server and database at the Internet service provider hosting the website".

The newspaper was forced to divert the site's visitors to the website of its sister paper, The Sunday Mail. The paper's IT manager Thompson Ndovi said the internet was "generally not secure in Zimbabwe". "It is only because there are few opportunities in hacking that few Zimbabweans are interested in it. But The Herald is certainly vulnerable especially in the obtaining political situation, and we are putting in place measures, along with our ISP, to improve security," he said. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said at the weekend he would contest a run-off presidential vote against Mugabe even though he believes he won outright in the first round and accuses the ruling Zanu PF of waging war on opposition supporters. The Zimbabwe government announced on Wednesday that the run-off would be held before August 1.

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