RE:PUBLICA THE MOST INSPIRING FESTIVAL FOR THE DIGITAL SOCIETY

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The re:publica programme is made by you! We are asking for your ideas for talks, panels, workshops, installations, exhibitions, performances - whatever you would like to contribute to our programme.

Contributions can generally be made in the following Tracks: Politics and Society, Arts and Culture, Business and Innovation, Science and Education, Media and Journalism. All submissions should be relevant to the core issues addressed by re:publica.

Apart from these overarching Tracks, topics we love to talk about at re:publica include: Internet politics and digital rights issues, Tech for Good, digital and social media affecting media consumption and production, emergence of new business models, forms of collaboration, new work, effects of new technologies like Blockchain, robotics and automation or Artificial Intelligence on governance, society and work environments, changes in pop culture and subculture through new technologies like Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, hacker culture, and maker movements.

What we’d like to see

Submissions that make it through our call usually contain original content, like research results or artistic reflections; they focus on a strong point or idea; and focus on more than a single project, case study or solution.

re:publica aims to present the opportunities and benefits of new technologies in various areas of society, while simultaneously taking a critical look behind the scenes. There is more to it than just a display of the latest technological developments, it's about evaluating them in the long term and making suggestions for the future.

Off-stage formats

Pitches are not what we are looking for, no matter how cool your company, app or device is. If you have a product - be it hardware or software that has a true impact and innovation potential - you can apply to showcase it in our marketplace “Made in Africa”, not in a talk on stage. If your project or tool is open source and you want to offer a workshop or training to show people how to use it, that works too.

In addition to the stage content (talks, panels, workshops) and the marketplace, we want to create space for meetups, networking and exchange - to this end we planned to create four themed lounges - one of them could be a pop-up makerspace, another a place for digital rights NGOs to meet. What thematic lounges do you think we should have? And are you interested in hosting or co-hosting one? Please submit your ideas for the lounges in the Call for Participation stating the topic you want the space to have, how you would design the space and what content you would offer there. We will provide space, travel funding and basic equipment for four themed lounges.

What we offer

A stage for your session and an excited audience – including recording and publication of your session on YouTube. Off-stage, there’ll be a crowd of like-minded people to network and laugh with. You’ll definitely be having lots of fun! We also offer travel support for a certain number of participants: read our FAQs to find out more.  

Deadlines and formalities

You have until September 9th at 11:59 pm (GMT) to submit your ideas. Use the opportunity to actively participate and shape the programme for the upcoming conference and please feel free to share our Call for Participation widely.
Each person is allowed one entry. Every person submitting must either provide a reference of a public speaking event or a short video message. Read up on all the important points and everything else you need to know in the FAQs, including the Session Guidelines. Let yourselves be inspired by the many videos from past re:publica events.

Register here to take part in the Call for Participation:
https://accra18.re-publica.com/en/user/register
Log in:
https://accra18.re-publica.com/en/user/login

Questions? You can reach the programme team via: programme-accra (at) re-publica (dot) com.

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Call for Participation

Le programme de re:publica Accra ne tient qu’à vous! Nous en appelons à vos idées: présentations, débats, workshops, installations, expositions, performances ou d’autres formes sous lesquelles vous voudriez contribuer à notre programme - l’appel à participation est ouvert!

Vos contributions peuvent être soumises dans les catégories suivantes: Politics & Society, Arts & Culture, Business & Innovation, Science & Education, Media & Journalism. Dans tous les cas, elles doivent se rapporter au cadre des thèmes clés de re:publica (voir À propos de re:publica Accra).

En dehors de ces catégories générales, re:publica s’intéresse également à d’autres domaines: l’internet politique et les droits digitaux; Tech for Good; les médias sociaux et digitaux qui influencent la production et consommation médiatique; les nouveaux modèles commerciaux et formes de collaboration; les répercussions de nouvelles technologies comme la blockchain, la robotique, l’automatisation ou l’intelligence artificielle sur la gouvernance, la société et les milieux professionnels; les transformations de la pop-culture et des subcultures à travers les nouvelles technologies comme la réalité virtuelle ou augmentée; la culture hacker ou encore le mouvement maker.

Nous recherchons:
Les contributions que nous attendons comprennent en règle générale des contenus originaux comme par exemple des conclusions à des recherches ou des réflexions artistiques. Elles se concentrent autour d’un point fort ou d’un fil conducteur et se focalisent sur plus d’un seul projet, d’une seule étude de cas ou solution.
re:publica a pour but de rendre compte des opportunités et avantages des nouvelles technologies dans plusieurs domaines sociaux et de jeter un regard critique en coulisses. Cependant, plus qu’un simple compte rendu des nouvelles technologies, l’ambition de re:publica est d’évaluer l’évolution de ces technologies à long terme afin de suggérer des solutions pour le futur. 

Les formats hors-scène 
Les pitchs de marketing ne sont pas ce que nous attendons sur nos scènes, peu importe à quel point on considère ton entreprise ou ton application cool. Si tu as un produit, que ce soit un hardware ou software, qui a un impact conséquent et un vrai potentiel d’innovation, tu peux participer au Call for Participation afin de présenter ton produit sur notre marché “Made in Africa” - et non en parler sur scène. Si ton produit ou ton outil est open source et tu voudrais donner un workshop ou une formation sur le sujet, ceci est également possible.

En plus du programme sur scène (conférences, débats, workshops), nous voulons encourager les rencontres, le networking et l’échange. Dans cette optique, nous avons prévu quatre lounges à thème: par exemple un pop-up makerspace, ou un lieu de rencontre pour les ONGs engagées dans la tech. Selon toi: quels autres lounges à thème pourrait offrir re:publica Accra? Serais-tu intéressé(e) d’en concevoir et animer un? Fais nous part de tes idées dans notre Call for Participation: quel thème souhaiterais-tu donner à ton lounge, comment imagines tu organiser cet espace et quel serait ton programme? En contrepartie, nous fournissons l’espace, ainsi qu’un équipement basique pour quatre lounges à thème et prenons en charge tes frais de déplacement.

Ce que nous t’offrons
Une scène et un public intéressé ainsi que l’enregistrement et la publication de ta contribution sur Youtube. Hors scène, tu rencontreras des personnes partageant les mêmes intérêts que toi et avec qui tu pourras entrer en contact. Nous offrons également une prise en charge des frais de voyage d’un certain nombre de participants: lire nos FAQs pour en savoir plus.

Délai et formalités
Vous avez jusqu’au 9 septembre à 23:59 (GMT) pour nous faire parvenir vos idées. Profitez de l’occasion pour contribuer au programme du premier rendez-vous de re:publica à Accra! Et surtout, n’hésitez pas à partager notre Call for Participation. 
Chaque personne a le droit de soumettre une seule contribution. Chaque personne soumettant sa contribution doit y attacher soit une référence à son expérience ultérieure en tant que speaker, ou un court message vidéo. Vous trouverez toute autre information importante comme par exemple les Session Guidelines dans notre rubrique FAQs. Laissez vous également inspirer par les videos de nos précédents évènements re:publica. 

Pour participer au Call for Participation, inscrivez-vous dès maintenant: https://accra18.re-publica.com/en/user/register
Se connecter: https://accra18.re-publica.com/en/user/login

Des questions? Contactez l'équipe programme via: programme-accra (at) re-publica (dot) com.

Google AI in Ghana

We've seen people across Africa do amazing things with the internet and technology—for themselves, their communities and the world. Over the past 10 years in which Google has had offices in Africa, we've been excited to be a part of that transformation. Ultimately 10 million Africans will benefit from our digital skills training program with 2 million people having already completed the course, and we’re supporting 100,000 developers and over 60 tech startups through our Launchpad Accelerator Africa. We’re also adapting our products to make it easy for people to discover the best of the internet, even on low-RAM smartphones or unstable network connections.

In recent years we've also witnessed an increasing interest in machine learning research across the continent. Events like Data Science Africa 2017 in Tanzania, the 2017 Deep Learning Indaba event in South Africa, and follow-on IndabaX events in 2018 in multiple countries have shown an exciting and continuing growth of the computer science research community in Africa.

Today, we’re announcing a Google AI research center in Africa, which will open later this year in Accra, Ghana. We’ll bring together top machine learning researchers and engineers in this new center dedicated to AI research and its applications.

We’re committed to collaborating with local universities and research centers, as well as working with policy makers on the potential uses of AI in Africa. On a personal note, both of the authors have ties to Africa—Jeff spent part of his childhood in Uganda and Somalia, and Moustapha grew up in Senegal. As such, we’re excited to combine our research interests in AI and machine learning and our experience in Africa to push the boundaries of AI while solving challenges in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, and education.

AI has great potential to positively impact the world, and more so if the world is well represented in the development of new AI technologies. So it makes sense to us that the world should be well represented in the development of AI. Our new AI center in Accra joins the list of other locations where we focus on AI, including Paris, Zurich, Tokyo, Beijing, Montreal, Toronto, Seattle, Cambridge/Boston, Tel Aviv/Haifa, New York, and our Mountain View/San Francisco headquarters. If you’re a machine learning researcher interested in joining this new center, you can apply as a Research Scientistor a Research Software Engineer. You can also view all our open opportunities on our site.

culled from : https://africa.googleblog.com/2018/06/google-ai-in-ghana.html

Special Meetup in Honour of Emmanuel Okyere

Dear Friends

The entire Technology community in Ghana has been mourning the loss of one of her finest developers, Emmanuel Okyere. Emmanuel was Project lead at Odekro, Founder of Hutspace, a leading member of the Python developer group in Africa and a champion of Open solutions.

In honour of Emmanuel Okyere, the ACCRA MOMO CHAPTER is hosting a special meetup on Friday 5th September 2014 in place of the regular MoMo which was originally scheduled for August 29, 2014. The event will be an opportunity to celebrate Emmanuel's achievements and explore how his legacy can live on. His inspiring work includes path breaking apps in governance, education and more.

Do join us on Friday 5th September, 5:30pm at the Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, Ridge-Accra, to celebrate the life, work and legacy of a true son of Ghana.

Sincerely,

Nana Fosu Nyante
Business Liaison Officer
Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT
P M B State House
Accra

Stanford bioengineers create circuit board modeled on the human brain

Stanford bioengineers have developed faster, more energy-efficient microchips based on the human brain – 9,000 times faster and using significantly less power than a typical PC. This offers greater possibilities for advances in robotics and a new way of understanding the brain. For instance, a chip as fast and efficient as the human brain could drive prosthetic limbs with the speed and complexity of our own actions.

The Neurogrid circuit board can simulate orders of magnitude more neurons and synapses than other brain mimics on the power it takes to run a tablet computer.

Stanford bioengineers have developed a new circuit board modeled on the human brain, possibly opening up new frontiers in robotics and computing.

For all their sophistication, computers pale in comparison to the brain. The modest cortex of the mouse, for instance, operates 9,000 times faster than a personal computer simulation of its functions.

Not only is the PC slower, it takes 40,000 times more power to run, writes Kwabena Boahen, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford, in an article for the Proceedings of the IEEE.

"From a pure energy perspective, the brain is hard to match," says Boahen, whose article surveys how "neuromorphic" researchers in the United States and Europe are using silicon and software to build electronic systems that mimic neurons and synapses.

Boahen and his team have developed Neurogrid, a circuit board consisting of 16 custom-designed "Neurocore" chips. Together these 16 chips can simulate 1 million neurons and billions of synaptic connections. The team designed these chips with power efficiency in mind. Their strategy was to enable certain synapses to share hardware circuits. The result was Neurogrid – a device about the size of an iPad that can simulate orders of magnitude more neurons and synapses than other brain mimics on the power it takes to run a tablet computer.

The National Institutes of Health funded development of this million-neuron prototype with a five-year Pioneer Award. Now Boahen stands ready for the next steps – lowering costs and creating compiler software that would enable engineers and computer scientists with no knowledge of neuroscience to solve problems – such as controlling a humanoid robot – using Neurogrid.

Its speed and low power characteristics make Neurogrid ideal for more than just modeling the human brain. Boahen is working with other Stanford scientists to develop prosthetic limbs for paralyzed people that would be controlled by a Neurocore-like chip.

"Right now, you have to know how the brain works to program one of these," said Boahen, gesturing at the $40,000 prototype board on the desk of his Stanford office. "We want to create a neurocompiler so that you would not need to know anything about synapses and neurons to able to use one of these."

Brain ferment

In his article, Boahen notes the larger context of neuromorphic research, including the European Union's Human Brain Project, which aims to simulate a human brain on a supercomputer. By contrast, the U.S. BRAIN Project – short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies – has taken a tool-building approach by challenging scientists, including many at Stanford, to develop new kinds of tools that can read out the activity of thousands or even millions of neurons in the brain as well as write in complex patterns of activity.

Zooming from the big picture, Boahen's article focuses on two projects comparable to Neurogrid that attempt to model brain functions in silicon and/or software.

One of these efforts is IBM's SyNAPSE Project – short for Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics. As the name implies, SyNAPSE involves a bid to redesign chips, code-named Golden Gate, to emulate the ability of neurons to make a great many synaptic connections – a feature that helps the brain solve problems on the fly. At present a Golden Gate chip consists of 256 digital neurons each equipped with 1,024 digital synaptic circuits, with IBM on track to greatly increase the numbers of neurons in the system.

Heidelberg University's BrainScales project has the ambitious goal of developing analog chips to mimic the behaviors of neurons and synapses. Their HICANN chip – short for High Input Count Analog Neural Network – would be the core of a system designed to accelerate brain simulations, to enable researchers to model drug interactions that might take months to play out in a compressed time frame. At present, the HICANN system can emulate 512 neurons each equipped with 224 synaptic circuits, with a roadmap to greatly expand that hardware base.

Each of these research teams has made different technical choices, such as whether to dedicate each hardware circuit to modeling a single neural element (e.g., a single synapse) or several (e.g., by activating the hardware circuit twice to model the effect of two active synapses). These choices have resulted in different trade-offs in terms of capability and performance.

In his analysis, Boahen creates a single metric to account for total system cost – including the size of the chip, how many neurons it simulates and the power it consumes.

Neurogrid was by far the most cost-effective way to simulate neurons, in keeping with Boahen's goal of creating a system affordable enough to be widely used in research.

Speed and efficiency

But much work lies ahead. Each of the current million-neuron Neurogrid circuit boards cost about $40,000. Boahen believes dramatic cost reductions are possible. Neurogrid is based on 16 Neurocores, each of which supports 65,536 neurons. Those chips were made using 15-year-old fabrication technologies.

By switching to modern manufacturing processes and fabricating the chips in large volumes, he could cut a Neurocore's cost 100-fold – suggesting a million-neuron board for $400 a copy. With that cheaper hardware and compiler software to make it easy to configure, these neuromorphic systems could find numerous applications.

For instance, a chip as fast and efficient as the human brain could drive prosthetic limbs with the speed and complexity of our own actions – but without being tethered to a power source. Krishna Shenoy, an electrical engineering professor at Stanford and Boahen's neighbor at the interdisciplinary Bio-X center, is developing ways of reading brain signals to understand movement. Boahen envisions a Neurocore-like chip that could be implanted in a paralyzed person's brain, interpreting those intended movements and translating them to commands for prosthetic limbs without overheating the brain.

A small prosthetic arm in Boahen's lab is currently controlled by Neurogrid to execute movement commands in real time. For now it doesn't look like much, but its simple levers and joints hold hope for robotic limbs of the future.

Of course, all of these neuromorphic efforts are beggared by the complexity and efficiency of the human brain.

In his article, Boahen notes that Neurogrid is about 100,000 times more energy efficient than a personal computer simulation of 1 million neurons. Yet it is an energy hog compared to our biological CPU.

"The human brain, with 80,000 times more neurons than Neurogrid, consumes only three times as much power," Boahen writes. "Achieving this level of energy efficiency while offering greater configurability and scale is the ultimate challenge neuromorphic engineers face."

Tom Abate writes about the students, faculty and research of the School of Engineering. Amy Adams of Stanford University Communications contributed to this report.

Culled from http://news.stanford.edu/  by BY TOM ABATE

Behold! the Nokia X

As a proud owner of a Nokia Lumia which runs a Windows Phone OS, I was curious to see how Nokia’s first Android device will turn out. The Nokia X smartphone, seems like a Stephen Elop legacy or should I say gamble. The device was launched some months back at the Mobile World Congress in Spain and unveiled a few weeks back here in Accra, and finally I have been able to get my hands on a unit to review.

Before I go into details, I would like to share images from the unboxing process below:

The device comes with all the necessary things to get you started. A set of instruction manuals, a USB wall charger and a set of bright red headphones. The only thing missing is a microUSB cable for data syncing ( I wonder why RED though…being an “EWE” man it is funny considering what people would say. *Ayigbe ni* with RED headphones).

Now let’s see what is under the hood.

Nokia X Quick Specs

Display Size: 4 inch IPS LCD capacitive touch screen with 480 x 800 resolution

Processor: 1 GHz Cortex A5 Dual Core Processor

RAM: 512 MB

Software Version: Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) OS

SIM: Dual MicroSim

Camera: 3 MP FF camera.

Secondary Camera (rear): No

Internal Storage: 4 GB with 2 GB approx. available

External Storage: Expandable up to 64GB

Battery: 1500 mAh battery Lithium Ion

Connectivity: 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, aGPS, 3.5mm audio jack, FM Radio

Sensors: Accelerometer, gyro, proximity

Physical Look

Easily fits in your pocket and palm at a weight of 128 grams with physical dimensions of 115.5 x 63 x 10.4 mm which makes it similar to Asha phones in terms of looks and build. Thus, quiet smaller than a Nexus, a Samsung Galaxy S5 or an Apple IPhone 5s.  It has a matte finish on the back cover and glass on the front... it is fairly light in weight and both of these things makes it fairly portable.

Operating System

Nokia X is built on Android Open Source Project and represents another fork of Google’s mobile operating system. The act of forking is defined as download free and open source software without prior approval of those currently developing, managing, or distributing the software. The first to attempt was when Amazon chose Gingerbread (2.3) as the base for building a mobile operating system for their Kindle Fire range of tablets, and Nokia selected Jelly Bean (4.1.2) for the Nokia X.

Not a bad choice though 18 months. I believe the average Android enthusiasts will find it acceptable. Nokia be someway ooo, they do not even mention Android in the phone settings as Nokia is calls the OS, Nokia X Software Platform.

Memory

In built memory of the device is 4 GB out of which around 2 GB is available to the user, but good thing about this device is that it has Micro SD card slot that can be expanded to 32 GB and you can move apps from phone to SD card and can also install apps on SD card.

User Interface

So Nokia is very smart or rather tried to maintain uniqueness as it used a non-familiar UI and not the regular Android look and feel. The “fast lane” and tile like looks ensures smooth navigation. You clearly see an inspiration from the Nokia Lumia and Asha series devices, as it has icons which looks and behave like tiles. When you swipe the lock screen it takes you to the home screen which shows you tiles for all the apps in a similar manner as shown on any Windows Phone device. Which means that the number of apps will increase with time and you have to scroll more and more to open a particular app, or you can just make folders or use the search option. Overall, the UI is good but a bit laggy sometimes but wait, what do you expect when you are limited to 512 MB of RAM.

Neat UI

Display

With an IPS LCD display at 480 x 800 pixels resolution, the display is good but the viewing angles are not that wide but still its looks decent.

Camera

The camera is 3 MP Fixed Focus  rear camera which is pretty average in photo quality but the overall quality is decent in daylight but in low light photos come out very average, please don’t expect too much from the camera on this phone. It is interesting to note that, there is no front facing camera. Thus, if an owner of a Nokia X device, forget selfies unless you use the rear camera with some positioning skills. Too bad for my selfie bombers Kwabena, Edward et al. You cannot do the Obama.

One of my cakes...

Media

The sound from the loudspeaker is good but not too loud and the earpiece gives clear sound without any distortion on voice calls. You can play 720p HD videos but 1080p videos cannot be played on this phone.

Gaming

You can play medium graphic intensive games and casual games like Temple Run 2 ,flappy bird( where is dbreeze? ) and subway surfer smoothly but heavy games may not run, if they run they will lag a lot this device is not designed to play HD games or graphic dependent games.

Battery

With a Snapdragon S4 processor running at 1GHz you have some good battery life, smooth running of the Nokia X platform and almost lag-free navigation. The battery on the device is 1500 mAh which can last up to 3-4 hours on heavy usage and on moderate usage you will get around 1 day or more as usage time.

 

Services

All the Google services such as Gmail, Google Maps and Gdrive including APIs and back-end support for maps, cloud messaging (Hangout), and the Play store, among others are replaced with Microsoft’s services such as OneDrive, Outlook ,Skype , HERE Maps to name a few in the Nokia X.  

A Microsoft flavor of Android allows it to develop its strategy of cloud services. You can download all the popular apps from the built in Nokia store or you access the regular android apps from the 1market. Two apps markets on one device? Isn’t that fascinating?

Conclusion

It is the first android phone from Nokia which is a worthwhile effort, great form factor, weight and build quality but the hardware on the phone specially RAM and camera is not “SOLID”.  With access to two SIMs via the dual MicroSim slots and the freedom to install apps from different stores you can spice your experience up with variety.

Web browsing is just okay and another drawback is that you will have to use a memory card if you plan on storing videos, music and images on this device. The 3G and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n functionality works pretty well. The overall performance of the phone is satisfactory but no real killer specifications including the smoothness and PureView technology found in the Lumia devices. I am still a Windows person though a Nokia person too so i say buy it. Its affordable 

 

 

Heartbleed Bug

Wetin Bleed? *Naija Tone*

In the past few weeks the term Heartbleed has been bundled around and the subject has even been extensively discussed by members of 'the Republic' (#TechRepublic) – Edward Tagoe, Kwabena Akuamoah Boateng , Joseph Dankwah , Jason Derek Bossman , Ethel Cofie , Naa Oyoo Quartey , Macjordan Degajor , Emeka Okoye , Yao Kuwornu and myself. 

The Republic having a selfie time with the US Ambassador to Ghana Gene Cretz

Heartbleed has left people wondering about how much of their data is comprised with some people hastily changing passwords amongst other things. Though changing your password before resolution would not make a user secure.

Heartbleed is not a virus, but rather a mistake written into OpenSSL— open-source software for SSL implementation across the Web.  It is a security vulnerability in OpenSSL software that may affect nearly two-thirds of websites online and allow hackers to access data servers that may contain username, password and other sensitive information.

With the disclosure of a bug in OpenSSL’s implementation of heartbeat, it is no longer necessary for cybercriminals to hack into the server to steal the credentials or private keys. An easy execution of a small code will provide them with wealth of information just by exploiting the vulnerability in OpenSSL. While this is happening, the server admin will never know that their server has been exploited and how much of the information has been leaked by the exploit.

Security researchers found out that an encryption technology SSL/TLS that helps in providing communication security and privacy over the network for various applications viz. web-based applications, email and VPN had this security flaw. This encryption technology that used to safely transmit e-commerce transactions, email, social networking data and other Internet traffic was affected by Heartbleed and this security flaw was enough for hackers to access user’s sensitive personal information.

This vulnerability allows anyone to steal the information which under normal circumstances is protected, by the SSL/TLS encryption. Therefore, attackers can steal a server’s digital key which is used to encrypt data and get easy access to an organization’s sensitive documents.

Security researchers also add that this newly discovered security vulnerability is extremely dangerous as it remained undiscovered for more than two years. However, Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer for Redwood City security company Qualys said that, it still remains unclear if hackers have taken advantage of the flaw to steal sensitive data from vulnerable sites.

Organizations such as  Yahoo have come out to declare resolution. However, is it just a publicity stunt to allay fears or they have truly resolved the issue.

Researchers at Codenomicon say that OpenSSL is used by two of the most widely used Web server software, Apache and nginx. This means a lot of internet sites would possibly have this vulnerability.

Wolfgang  Kandek of Redwood City added, many affected websites will now have to have their encryption keys recertified as safe. That’s because even after fixing the flaw in their software, unsafe keys can easily allow hackers to steal sensitive personal information.

Moreover, every website / server / service admin, who uses OpenSSL should be concerned about this vulnerability as it breaks everything for which SSL encryption was deployed in the first place.

So what are the things, a user should consider?

§  Change your passwords only after the affected online service provider has updated their servers in order to compensate for the Heartbleed vulnerability.

§  Services which are affected are ought to be sending emails to users and informing them, that they were affected by Heartbleed and have since updated their servers.

§  Only when you receive this update, change your password, otherwise it will not have the expected outcome.

§  But, if the website has already been compromised, and it is still to fix its software then you should wait to change your password.

• If you are doubtful about a website’s status and whether it is compromised or not, you can go online and check by doing a Heartbleed Vulnerability test

On these sites:

 https://lastpass.com/heartbleed/

https://sslanalyzer.comodoca.com/heartbleed.html

https://pentest-tools.com/vulnerability-scanning/openssl-heartbleed-scanner

            https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html

§  As phishing attacks are continuously increasing, some hackers may provide you with links to change your password. To ensure complete safety, manually go to the website yourself, log in and then change your password.

Once you can confirm resolution change your password but ensure that you have a “strong” password, few tips for changing your password:

Never give out your password to anyone (Not even your spouse):

 Never give it to friends, even if they’re really good friends. A friend can – accidentally, we hope – pass your password along to others or even become an ex-friend and abuse it.

Don’t just use one password:

It’s possible that someone working at a site where you use that password could pass it on or use it to break into your accounts at other sites.

Make the password at least 8 characters long: 

The longer the better. Longer passwords are harder for thieves to crack.Include numbers, capital letters and symbols. Consider using a $ instead of an S or a 1 instead of an L, or including an & or % – but note that $1ngle is NOT a good password. Password thieves are onto this. But Mf$1avng (short for “My friend Sam is a very nice guy) is an excellent password.

Create passwords that are easy to remember but hard for others to guess (unique):

When possible, use a phrase such as “I started working in chorkor 1999” and use the initial of each word like this: “IswinC99#!”

Don’t use dictionary words: 

If it’s in the dictionary, there is a chance someone will guess it.  If I am a hacker, I will just write a script to guess dictionary words and common words. Those who like using great, love, sweetheart,heartbeat ,etc. Abeg! That is giving a class 1 assignment to an undergrad student.

Don’t post it in plain sight: 

This might seem obvious but studies have found that a lot of people post their password on their monitor with a sticky note. Bad idea.  If you must write it down, hide the note somewhere where no one can find it. But for God sake, try to keep your password in your head.

Ebei! Is that that difficult? Even after some Bukom Banku beating, you should remember.

Consider using a password manager:

 Programs or Web services like RoboForm (Windows only) or Lastpass (Windows and Mac) let you create a different very strong password for each of your sites. Ultimately, it solves the problem by helping you generate random passwords for each account or site. But you only have to remember the one password to access the program or secure site that stores your passwords for you.

Enable dual-factor authentication: 

Where there is two factor authentication , use it (Gmail is one email service that does so) In addition to a password, the service requests for another identifying information, such as a code that can be sent to you via SMS but if MTN , GLO , TIGO , AIRTEL or VODAFONE decides to screw you , then you are on your own

Credits: Qualys , escan , Efo Koku

Press Release:TECNO cracks down on counterfeit handsets in Africa

With the mobile phone manufacturer TECNO becoming more and more popular in African market, a great many of fake products appeared, threatening the benefits of the manufacturer, its distributors and dealers, local government and the customers as well. TECNO determined to offer a heavy blow to fake handsets in many countries in Africa, such as Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and so on, hoping for building a healthier mobile phone market for customers.

TECNO has been taking a series of actions against fake phones. For example, TECNO has an operation jointly with local distributors and polices to attack the counterfeit handsets dealers to restrict fraud, many technicians from TECNO’s authorized after-sale service center Carlcare will be distributed to check whether a phone is genuine or not. Besides, various kind of other activities are being used to resist counterfeit products and advocate genuine mobile phones, such as public posters, multi-media advertisements and so on. Most of those actions will spread throughout Africa. TECNO also provides consumers with a website to check whether their phones are genuine or not: http://gc.tecno-mobile.com/.

Take Ghana as an example, TECNO office joined forces with its local agent last week to crack down on counterfeit products in two key target markets flooding with fake TECNO mobile phones, Accra and Kumasi.

In Accra, Ghanaian agency teamed up with local police in joint operation on April 1, with many technicians from Carlcare after-sale service centers, and inspected 9 shops. About 2,000 alleged counterfeit TECNO phones have been seized. In Kumasi, the agency together with local police carried out this anti-fraud campaign on April 2, with the technicians from Carlcare after-sale service center, inspected 6 shops. About 1,550 alleged counterfeit TECNO phones have been seized. Inquiries are continuing and a number of people are expected to be interrogated.

As a matter of fact, Ghanaian agency had informed the dealers to stop selling fake TECNO phones before February through Accra Mobile Phone Association. And the floods of fake TECNO phones in the market really fade away over that period. However, more inspections still be needed.

The counterfeit phones do not only threaten the revenues of both the manufacturer and the government, but also do harm to consumers and legitimate businesses. It is believed that the movement was designed to protect consumers from poor quality of counterfeit handsets and to safeguard mobile payment systems. TECNO is committed to joining in the anti-counterfeit fight and will cooperate with local government to clean the market of fake TECNO mobile phones throughout Africa.