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Sports News of Wednesday, 31 March 2021

Source: http://www.ghanaweb.com

The exercise is to limit the spread of coronavirus at game venues

The National Sports Authority has embarked on a disinfection exercise of all accredited match venues ahead of the resumption of the 2020/2021 Ghana Premier League.

A disinfection implementation plan sighted by GhanaWeb indicates that the exercise which begun on March 30, 2021, will end tomorrow, April 1, 2021.

In all, fourteen match venues are expected to be disinfected as part of plans to limit the spread of Covid-19 during Premier League matches.

The Ghana Premier League has been on break since March 6, 2021, after the end of the first round.

The league was initially supposed to resume on March 19 but was rescheduled due to the involvement of some players in Black Stars assignment.

This weekend will, however, see a return of the league with a top-liner between Accra Hearts of Oak and Aduana Stars at the Accra Sports Stadium.

The Ghana Football Association has meanwhile released a list of venues that have been cleared to host games.

The venues, according to the Club Licensing Board have fulfilled all conditions necessary to hold matches.

The first half of the season ended with Karela United leading the table with 31 points, one more than Accra Great Olympics.

Giants Accra Hearts of Oak and Kotoko occupy the third and fourth spots respectively.

Inter allies, on the other hand, are languishing at the bottom of the league table with just 12 points. Joining them in the relegation battle are Liberty Professionals and King Faisal.

The exercise is being undertaken by Tebel Company Ltd.

More here:
NSA begins disinfection of game venues ahead of GPL return - GhanaWeb

In an opinion column in the Washington Post on Sunday, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote that in the Obama administration, Gates had proposed creating the position of a deputy director at the NSA who would be a DHS cybersecurity official. That official would have the legal authority to ask the NSA to conduct surveillance on domestic networks and defend against ongoing attacks, Gates wrote.

The new position would come with legal restrictions on how the new authority would be used and would be designed to safeguard Americans from unwanted, unauthorized surveillance, Gates said. The proposal was signed off on by then Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and receivedthe blessing of the Justice Department, but Gates wrote that the initiative came to naught, mainly because of bureaucratic foot-dragging and resistance.

Asked whether such a proposal was being considered now, the DHS officials who briefed reporters declined to address it specifically. One official said the administration is conducting an in-depth lessons-learned exercise on both the Russian and Chinese attacks and would offer recommendations once it has completed the review.

CISA, which is allowed by law only to provide advisory services to federal, stateand local government agencies and U.S. companies, is not in a position to demand any information from agencies and companies that are affected by a cyber attack, leaving that agency also in the dark about the extent of a major attack.

Lawmakers have called for expanding the powers and budget for CISA to make the agency in charge of all federal government networks that operate under the "dot gov" domain, similar to how the U.S. Cyber Command oversees cybersecurity for the U.S. military network.

Read more from the original source:
DHS studying ways to plug cyber blind spots, officials say - Roll Call

By Bashir Bello, KANO

A Network of Civil Society Organizations operating in states across the federation has on Tuesday rose from an emergency meeting in Kano to kick against the alleged plot to remove Gen. Babagana Munguno as the National Security Adviser, NSA for the revelation of alleged missing or misappropriation of one billion dollars for the procurement of arms and ammunitions.

The network in a communique issued and signed by the convener, Comrade Ibrahim Waiya said Gen. Mungunos revelations deserve national honour and respect but not persecution.

Comrade Waiya describes the alleged act of conspiracy against the National Security Adviser as unpatriotic, uncalled for and a smear on decorum.

He reiterated the networks position on the need for President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately set up a special panel of investigation into the matter while the National Assembly should support the advocacy for the setting up of the panel of an investigation by the Presidency.

According to him, the Conference of States Civil Society Networks, wishes to unequivocally throw its weight behind numerous calls across the country for an immediate probe on the alleged $1 billion arms deal, urging President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently proceed by setting up a special panel of investigation into the matter.

It equally supports the efforts of Government in the fight against corruption, as well as promotion of transparency and accountability in governance.

We, therefore, feel obliged to remind the National Assembly on their constitutional role of the oversight function, hence a duty to support the advocacy for the setting up of the panel of an investigation by the Presidency on the alleged missing $1 billion released for the procurement of arms and ammunition.

The convener further said, Rising from an emergency meeting in Kano, we as a group of reputable Civil Society Organizations operating in different states across the country, resolved to take an exception to the grand conspiracy to have the National Security Adviser, Babagana Munguno replaced as a price for telling the truth about the enduring arms deal widely discussed at both national and international platforms. It is on this note we wish to describe the alleged act of conspiracy as unpatriotic, uncalled for and a smear on decorum.

It is our conviction that the singular act of patriotism demonstrated by Major Gen. Babagana Mungono on the revelations over the alleged missing funds released for the procurement of arms and ammunitions, deserves national honour and respect but not persecution on the basis of a personal vendetta by the imperceptible anti citizens and anti-democracy elements, who get pride in promoting impunity and are hell-bent on destroying the reputation and integrity of the country, by cashing on their personal gains and serving the instincts of their arrogance.

This is a total embarrassment for the Nigerian nation to be enmeshed in yet another round of arms fund scandal with vested interests desperately struggling to kill all efforts aimed at uncovering the truth for Nigerians to know.

We wish to canvass for the support of all Nigerians to rally around and ensure that we bring an end to this kind of unpleasant experience that create both domestic and international embarrassment, and ensure that all persons or groups found guilty of shortchanging the country in the fight against killings, arson and general insecurity are sanctioned and brought to justice, regardless of their self-acclaimed influence or relationship with the apex political power corridor in the land.

It is to our utmost surprise that, if it were in other civilized climes, those being widely accused in this fresh round of arms deal would have by now been charged to court. We cannot fathom why true citizens of any nation should kick against the probe of a suspected breach of this magnitude, not even minding the price of the problem on lives and properties of innocent men, women and girls in our country and the envisaged negative impact on their future.

We wish to assure Nigerians that, an alleged scam of this magnitude cannot just be swept under the carpet because those in positions of authority saddled with the responsibility of protecting Nigerians lives have no excuse for compromise, the communique however reads.

Vanguard News Nigeria

Read the original:
Alleged $1 Billion Arms Deal: CSOs kick against alleged plot to remove Munguno as NSA - Vanguard

Court hearings into the EncroChat encrypted phone network compromised by French police have been delayed after lawyers requested prosecutors to disclose further evidence on law enforcements capabilities to decrypt communications.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) has made more than 1,550 arrests under Operation Venetic after the French Gendarmerie harvested millions of supposedly secure messages from the EncroChat cryptophone network, which police say was used by criminal groups.

Defence lawyers have argued that the disclosure of evidence has been made more difficult because disclosure officers do not understand the technical detail in documents relating to police hacking of the EncroChat encrypted phone network.

The courts are preparing to hear up to a dozen preparatory hearings that will decide on the lawfulness, admissibility and reliability of material retrieved from the EncroChat network the decisions in which will be binding on future prosecutions.

The NCA has not disclosed details of how many people have been charged under Operation Ventetic, the UKs response to the takedown of EncroChat, but it is understood that around 450 defendants are contesting their prosecutions across the UK.

Jonathan Kinnear QC is overseeing the national strategy for all 250 prosecution cases in the UK including dealing with legal challenges to the admissibility of EncroChat evidence for the Crown Prosecutions Organised Crime Division.

Speaking at a preparatory hearing, he said prosecution lawyers were working to process requests for discovery from defence lawyers.

He told a court that defence lawyers had submitted documents from public websites, some of which were marked top secret or top secret strap one in evidence.

We have been working on a response to defence disclosure requests and re-reviewing the disclosure position over the course of last week and this weekend, he said.

Given the complexity of the issues, including the technical nature of them and the sheer volume of the material involved, we have not yet completed that review. These are important issues that have an impact not just on this case, but on a significant number of other cases.

Defence lawyers raised new questions about the capabilities of law enforcement to decrypt live communications after Belgian and Dutch police announced they had infiltrated a second secure cryptophone network, Sky ECC.

Belgian and Dutch police disclosed during a press conference on 10 March 2021 that they had intercepted more than one billion encrypted messages from the Sky Cryptophone network, and had decrypted half of them.

Defence lawyers have raised questions over whether the joint operation between the UK, France and Holland had the ability to decrypt messages from EncroChat. If true, they argue, that would undermine facts presented in earlier court hearings.

If it turns out there have been investigations with the NCA or other British agencies, and that involves decryption of messages whilst in transmission, this is clearly disclosable and goes to the heart of the case, one defence lawyer told a judge the day after the announcement.

Experts are divided over how the French Gendarmerie obtained the decrypted messages, notes and photographs from the EncroChat network.

Classified documents leaked by former CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the US and the UK have invested heavily in highly sensitive programmes to break the encryption of online communications.

The NSA and GCHQ developed capabilities to break the encryption web mail, encrypted chat, encrypted voice over IP (VoIP), virtual private networks (VPNs) and the encryption used by 4G mobile phone services.

Snowden documents reveal that theNSAs mission was to weaken encryption technologies by influencing encryption standards, forming partnerships with telecommunications companies and inserting vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems.

Both EncroChat and Sky ECC phones use a form of encryption known as elliptical curve cryptography (ECC), which is suited to mobile applications as it offers small faster and more secure cryptographic keys than other forms of encryption.

Secure encryption relies on the ability of software to generate secret prime numbers randomly, often using pseudo-random number generators, to calculate encryption keys which are difficult for intelligence agencies to predict.

Internal NSA memos reported byThe New York Times suggest that the NSA had compromised at least one random number generator, called the Dual EC ERBG, which was adopted by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology and the International Standard Organisation.

Security company RSA, which used Dual EC ERBG by default in some of its security products, subsequently advised its customers to switch to alternative pseudo-random number generators.

A judgment by the Court of Appeal on 5 February 2021, however, found that French police had been able to use a software implant to access messages from phone handsets before they had been encrypted. They were automatically forwarded to a server set up by the French digital crime unit, C3N.

Defence lawyers said in a preliminary hearing that they suspected that disclosure officers do not understand a lot of the technical details in documents related to Operation Venetic.

There is far more likely to be a reliable disclosure exercise if there is an expert assisting a disclosure officer or even an expert appointed as a disclosure officer who can understand the significance of the material, one lawyer said.

The lawyer said the defence team had requested prosecution disclosure in November last year, but that it was making further reactive requests for disclosure following the takedown of Sky ECC in Belgium.

French investigators broke the supposedly secure EncroChat encrypted mobile phone network, used by 50,000 people worldwide, including 9,000 in the UK, in April 2020, after gaining access to the EncroChat servers discovered in a datacentre run by OVH in Roubaix.

Investigators installed software implants on tens of thousands of mobile phone handsets which, according to the court of appeal, retrieved supposedly secure messages, photographs and notes from the phones before they were encrypted.

The French have refused to disclose any details to the courts in the UK and European countries bringing prosecutions against EncroChat users about how the implants work, citing national defence reasons.

Further hearings have been put back to late April or early May.

Read this article:
EncroChat hearings delayed as lawyers seek disclosure on police hacking - ComputerWeekly.com

In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed the NSA collects personal data on every American, as well as many more people worldwide. The shockwave of the revelations still ripples today.

The NSA is the U.S. National Security Agency. Although it ostensibly works to protect U.S. citizens and interests, the NSA monitors every American and the people of many allied countriesall with the backing of the U.S. government and large portions of Congress.

But its not only the NSA spying on its own people. Its counterparts at the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) are also spying on and hacking targets of interest.

Here are eight ways the NSA is still spying on you, right now, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden and further investigation by the press.

In 2018, the NSA acquired data from over 600 million phone calls and text messages. It proceeded to delete many of them, citing technical irregularities but didnt specify how many were expunged from servers. The USA FREEDOM Act, passed in 2015, puts the onus on telecommunication providers to hold on to phone records, after which they can be requested by the NSA rather than the spy agency keeping tabs on them directly.

This has meant that the overall extent of phone records collected by the NSA has gone downbut its hard to take their word at face value. After all, it wouldnt be the first time that the NSA has straight up lied about its surveillance policies.

Facebook, Google, Apple, and six other leading online services have all gone on record as having given their customers data to the NSA, as legally required by the PRISM program. Data shared includes emails, messages, and documents.

When the NSA finds a security hole in a popular consumer device, it does not fix the security hole, but instead exploits it. The NSAs hacking unit, Tailored Access Operations, has developed a whole range of hacking exploits. These enable the NSA to break into consumer electronics devices and IT systems as it sees fit.

The NSA has made the job of hacking security devices easier for itself by coercing many manufacturers to build vulnerabilities into products. The NSA supposedly created new guidelines surrounding this practice after the Snowden revelations but refuses to say what those guidelines are.

If that isnt enough, the NSA is known to intercept shipments of computers and phones to put backdoors on them. The backdoor circumvents security measures of the device, allowing the NSA to spy on the end user.

When you move around town, cell phone towers can calculate your exact position. Though the NSA claims it no longer collects this bulk data itself, cell phone providers are still required to do so, and they, in turn, must surrender those records to the NSA when ordered by a court.

By far the worst aspect of this unwieldy power is that you dont even have to be the subject of an inquiry yourself. The data of millions can be handed over, without notice, because you had even the most tangential connection to a person under surveillance.

The internet connects different continents via undersea fiber optic cables that carry staggering amounts of data. In some places, the NSA has deals with local intelligence agencies to tap into these cables; in others, it does so on its own. The NSA even uses submarines to attach snooping bugs to wires deep beneath in the ocean.

In Brazil, Germany, and other countries, the NSA has broken into the internal networks of major telecommunications providers, intercepting the data they gather and weakening the security of their systems. It collects every email and phone call it can.

Through agreements and hacking, the NSA can access credit card networks, payment gateways, and wire-transfer facilities around the world. This monetary surveillance allows the NSA to follow every cent of your money and know where it comes from and what you spend it on.

Another revelation in the Snowden documents was that the NSA asks senior officials in the White House, State Department, and Pentagon to share personal information they have on foreign leaders.

The leaked memo revealed that over 200 confidential phone numbers were handed over to the NSA, which proceeded to tap their conversations. The NSA didnt spare countries friendly to the U.S. either, with German leader Angela Merkel also one of the ones targeted.

Cookies, or small packets of data that relay location history and used to serve you with targeted ads, have also been collected by the NSA. The spy agency has honed in on them to identify users around the world as prime hacking targets.

While NSA surveillance extends across the globe, there is still a lot you can do to safeguard your internet privacy. Check out this list of top privacy tips and always be conscious of what youre sharing, with whom youre sharing, and how you share it.

Johnny 5 is the founding editor of the blog and writes about pressing technology issues. From important cat privacy stories to governments and corporations that overstep their boundaries, Johnny covers it all.

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Read more:
10 Ways the NSA Is Spying on You Right Now | ExpressVPN Blog