NiRA plans ngCERT to avert hacking reoccurrence

The recent News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) presidential resignation saga is basically a technology issue, according to the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), a group mandated to manage the country's top-level domain.

Last Tuesday, a false media report attributed to NAN stated that Nigerian President Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua would resign from office due to poor health. Channels Tv aired the report, promptly causing the National Broadcasting Commission to suspend the station's license.

NAN, however, has since denied being the source of the story. Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Abuja metropolitan desk, Alli Hakeem, attributed the incident to the handiwork of mischief makers, alleging that its system may have been attacked by hackers.

In response to the incident, NiRA has advanced plans to institute a dot ng certification (ngCert) to avoid anything similar from occurring in the future.

“A national CERT is an imperative for any serious nation on the cyberspace,” asserted NiRA President Ndukwe Kalu.

The ngCERT, he explained, will allow network managers to share exploit details and work toward mitigating such attacks in the future.

Breaches such as what occurred at NAN are possible through weak passwords, insider collusion, and poor or nonexistent firewalls and access controls, he said. Most people are fooled easily as to identity because authentic Web sites and e-mails are, at best, laughable, he added.

"You have situations where the fake electronic mails and Web addresses even look more authentic than the original,” Kalu said.

Since the breach, NAN has denounced the free e-mail addresses it used prior to Sept. 16 and has decided to move to a specific domain.

"Why would NAN not apply to register nan.com.ng and stop all forms of speculation once and for all?” Kalu wondered.

Kalu insisted that Nigerian government officials and agencies desist from using dot.com or any other foreign domain, lamenting the fact that the Central Bank of Nigeria uses www.cenbank.org.

“Both the new addresses of NAN and the current address of Central Bank are, to say the least, unfit for the institutions," he said. "This is what has made forgery thrive,” he said.

NiRA has two key advantages to offer legitimate firms that choose the dot ng domain, according to Kalu: “First is that it is virgin, and most if not all companies would get their names as it should be -- no unneeded abbreviation. ... Secondly, for dot ng, we maintain a zero-tolerance for cyber squatting.”

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.