BY SAM ALFAN.
A Ugandan businessman was yesterday charged in a Nairobi court with unlawfully accessing Safaricom’s network.
Ronald Nsale appeared before Milimani Chief Magistrate Francis Andayi and pleaded not guilty to the charge. He was granted Sh 200,000 bond with a similar surety pending the hearing of the case on May 23.
The offence was allegedly committed on diverse dates between December 1, 2016 and March 30, 2017 at
Kilimani area in Nairobi county.
According to the prosecution, an IT expert with Safaricom noticed suspicious attempts to access the network remotely from one of the service lines used by staff members. Investigations traced the intruder to the accused person’s mobile telephone.
ACCORDING TO POLICE REPORT
It is said that he tried to enquire from the said staff about the malpractice and did deny having tried to access the system remotely .
The matter was reported to the Senior Manager fraud investigation who took up the matter and revealed audit logs from security monitoring systems and confirmed the user had made several attempts upon further forensic analysis established that a Safaricom line registered by another person who was not a member or Safaricom staff.
The matter was reported to Parliament police station and investigation commenced where suspects traced to Kilimani and arrested. Police says that the accused person was searched and found to have been using the said Safaricom line which was recovered with Huawei phone.
It is said that after the accused was arrested his Mobile phone and laptop make HP among other internet connection were taken on inventory and later handed over to DCI cyber crime for further analyses which revealed the extend of the access the suspect had done.
It is said that On further investigation it was established the suspect had been put in a proposal for penetration training in a response to a request for proposal from Safaricom to price Waterhouse copers PWC .
The accused is said that he had put in the said proposal among other trainers by PWC and he had been recommended by one George Wahome of PWC since he knew him by working together in Earnest & young limited in Uganda after agreeing to be part of trainers from PWC the suspect is believed to have started the trials on an authorized access of a protected systems and penetrated as per cyber crime report and the opinion report from safaricom report a IT expert.
