“Hackers Have Poor Nations’ PCs in Their Sights”

Cybersecurity remains an untamed frontier in developing countries, allowing hackers to operate and wreak havoc with near-total impunity. “All in all, you have a perfect recipe for botnet attacks in the developing world,” notes Ethan Zuckerman of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He observes that hacker activity rises dramatically once a country achieves 10 percent to 15 percent Internet penetration. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is rolling out a global effort to implement cybersecurity measures that the developed world uses within the Third World, but it will be a formidable challenge. Poorer nations do not possess the funds for countermeasures nor the technical training to erect effective cyberdefenses, partly because the cost of Internet connectivity is much higher than it is in industrialized countries. Africa, which is already beset with economic turmoil and computer vulnerability, could become even more ripe for cyber-exploitation as cheap, streamlined computers become widely available through initiatives such as the One Laptop Per Child program. International cooperation is essential to the improvement of developing nations’ cyberdefenses, says the University of Cologne’s Marco Gercke. Seymour Goodman of the Georgia Institute of Technology cites the importance of organizing national computer emergency response teams (CERTs), which would analyze the type of attack and the required countermeasures while also informing ISPs, and the ITU wants to supply the expertise and training to set up CERTs in all developing countries.