NAIROBISECRETS.COM FIGHTS BACK CYBER CRIME ATTACK

Cheptoek Boyo

Last week, visitors to www.nairobisecrets.com, Kenya’s new women’s online lingerie store, may have noticed “attack site” warning that has prevented them from accessing the shop’s homepage.
The truth is, www.nairobisecrets.com was a victim of an unprecedented but coordinated attack, a technique in which a “competitor” or “hacker” plants a script on the site that sends the wrong “safety” signal to Google and other search engines. This “safety” alarm triggers a shutdown by Google and other search engines bouncing customers and other surfers attempting to access the site.
The site's lingerie models are Cheptoek Boyo, Elizabeth Muthoni a.k.a Sonia, Vera Sidika and Rachel Kamau.
According to a press release sent out by the sites managing director Edith Orwako:
"Though our security features systems prevented substantive impact to our services, including safety of customers’ info, the attack undermined our ability to transact business through the weekend.

Vera Sidika

"Presently, our engineers have arrested the attack script, repaired the damage and improved the security features that will deter such mischief in future. We have also passed the complaint to Google Systems, a lead search engine who will in the next 48 hours conduct a thorough safety review of the website before normal shopping services resume.
"We have also reported the matter to Kenya’s anti cybercrime officers to conduct an investigation and determine the person or persons behind the attack and their possible motives.


Elizabeth Muthoni

"On the brighter side however, www.nairobisecrets.com would like to assure all our customers that our first priority has been identifying what was happening and then installing the filters to enable our users to access our services without compromising the security of information in our systems.


Rachel Kamau

"Security foresight also ensured that the saboteurs did not gain access inside our computers or retrieve information about our customers.
"While apologizing to our consumers for the inconvenience, www.nairobisecrets.com condemns this kind of economic sabotage which retards development of Kenyan’s growing online trade. Because whatever the hackers’ purpose, the end result is the same...an attack often motivated by nothing more than pure greed."