Zimbabwe Takes Lead As The Most Hackable Country In The World

The main reason Zimbabwe is taking lead as the most hackable country in the world out of 183 countries is due to having many internet protocol (IP) addresses that are still using an outdated protocol leaving firms susceptible to cyber-attacks.

An IP address is the number assigned to a network-equipped piece of hardware by which other devices can identify it.

What’s really frightening is the reality that the complete network of an exposed nation could be taken down. You might have heard about hacker disrupting power plants. Millions or even billion devices are running with one more open ports making themselves prone to ruthless malware like WannaCry and Petya.

The National Exposure Index by Rapid7 is an annual report which details the state of the internet in 183 countries. It provides stats about devices with open ports, penetration of protocols like HTTPS, SSH, SMTPS, etc., and the degree to which particular countries are exposed to cyber attacks.

Rapid7’s report of the most hackable countries for the year 2017 puts Zimbabwe as the most exposed country on the earth – out of 183 countries analyzed for the report – with 54.71% of its internet unencrypted.

Rapid7 said:

“Zimbabwe has a total of 88 576 possible IP addresses allocated to it, and 3 295 of those addresses appear responsive to port 23 (telnet protocol), for an overall rate of 3,7% responsiveness to an exposed service.”

Basically, the telnet protocol provides access to a command-line interface usually, of an operating system on a remote host, including most network equipment and operating systems with a configuration utility including systems based on Windows NT.

The telnet protocol is a utility that mainly sits on a Windows operating system below Windows 7.

Recently, ICT, Postal and Courier Services Minister Supa Mandiwanzira said the government found that two banks among several other financial institutions were affected by the WannaCry virus attack.

In Zimbabwe, most critical systems such as some of the ones used by banks were on lower operating systems than Windows 7 such as Windows XP.

This ranking came as the government, confirmed recently that several business and financial institutions including banks were affected by the WannaCry virus global attack in May.

The WannaCry, a ransomware crypto worm virus, targeted computers running the Microsoft Windows operating systems around the world.

Zimbabwe Information and Communication Technologies (ZICT) chairperson, Jacob Mutisi said the ranking proved government needed to create a platform for ICT experts to meet.

“It is a ZICT proposal that the government of Zimbabwe provide a platform where ICT experts meet to find a lasting solution to the use of FREE email providers. The move must be brought as a matter of urgency amid concerns about rising cybercrime and hacking incidents.”