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ASHGABAT (TCA) — President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov held a video-conference working session on January 21 with the participation of some vice-premiers and hyakims (heads of administration) of Ashgabat and velayats (provinces), to discuss seasonal agricultural works and the aspects of social and economic development of the capital and regions, the State News Agency of Turkmenistan reported. Continue reading
DUSHANBE (TCA) — Western diplomats in Tajikistan have expressed concern over the “periodic blockage” of news and social-media websites in the country. Continue reading
TASHKENT (TCA) — An award ceremony marking the completion of the Open Data Challenge 2018, a digital information competition organized by the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan (PCUz) in co-operation with the Ministry for Development of Information Technology and Information of Uzbekistan, took place on December 7 in Tashkent. Continue reading
ALMATY (TCA) — Kazakhstan has faced the growing threat of international cybercrime groups penetrating the country, but Kazakh authorities lack qualified personnel to address the problem. We are republishing this article on the issue, written by Almaz Kumenov, originally published by Eurasianet: Imagine a small town in the middle of Kazakhstan’s steppes. An elderly lady is speaking to her grandson over Skype. He moved to the big city for university. “Come home for the holidays. I’ll make you beshbarmak,” the grandmother says. “Ok then, I will,” the young man says. As the woman shares some gossip and asks if her grandson is making sure to wrap up warm, her laptop is unbeknownst to her performing a series of illicit operations. Money is being spirited out of a bank account halfway across the planet. This is not an implausible scenario if warnings from Arman Abdrasilov, director of the Astana-based Center for Cyberattack Analysis and Research, or TsARKA in its Russian-language acronym, are close to the mark. Kazakhstan is proving especially appealing to online crooks thanks to the combination of lax legislation and weak cybercrime prevention bodies, experts warn. “One of the world’s most dangerous hacker groups, Cobalt, which specializes in hacking into bank accounts, is moving into Kazakhstan,” Abdrasilov said. When TsARKA raised the alarm, which it issued earlier this year on the back of research done by Moscow-based cybersecurity company Positive Technologies, it caused a few ripples but has generated little by way of a visible response from the authorities. The government should probably be concerned, however. According to online security company Group-IB, the Cobalt group, which emerged around 2013, targeted Russian banks with phishing emails containing programs that would enable them to gain access to password-protected archives. That was the first step toward gaining remote control of ATMs, which would then spit out cash to associates. Positive Technologies has assessed that the Cobalt gang, which is so-named for the malignant software it has used to gain access to targeted mainframes, has since 2017 branched out from its traditional areas of operation, in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, to financial institutions in Europe and North America. The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, or Europol, believes the Cobalt gang has targeted banks in more than 40 countries, causing the financial industry losses of more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion). In 2017 alone, Cobalt carried out more than 20 attacks on 240 Russian financial institutions and stole more than $15 million, the Russian Central Bank revealed in February. When Abdrasilov talks about Cobalt finding a new home in Kazakhstan, he is not suggesting that any of its members would physically relocate there. Instead, vulnerable computers in the country would be hacked and used remotely as a smokescreen for mounting attacks on bank servers. Abdrasilov says security experts have recorded a spike in the number of computers in Kazakhstan being hijacked by Cobalt. When $81 million was stolen from the Bangladesh Bank in February 2016, it was done in part...
BISHKEK (TCA) — How to promote economic prosperity and growth through e-business and e-commerce was the focus of an international conference in Bishkek held on 1 and 2 November, which was organized jointly by the Ministry of Economy of Kyrgyzstan and the OSCE Programme Office in Bishkek. Continue reading
ASTANA (TCA) — In attempts to suppress any dissent and opposition, authorities in Kazakhstan have cracked down on social-media and messenger application users that share protest moods. We are republishing this article on the issue, written by Chris Rickleton, originally published by Eurasianet: When Aigul Akberdi downloaded the Telegram messenger application, she thought it would be a little bit of fun. Akberdi, a 38-year-old mother of four in the western Kazakhstan town of Aktau, said she was inspired to get the app after watching funny videos promoted on Facebook and Instagram. Her husband, Ablovas Jumayev, had got hooked on Telegram a few months before. Then the couple discovered a taste for politics. Now, Akberdi and Jumayev are being prosecuted in cases that illustrate how Kazakhstan’s authorities are borrowing from the playbook of authoritarian peers like Russia and Iran in cracking down on dissidence even in the virtual world. Jumayev’s trial began in Aktau earlier this month. He is accused of using Telegram to incite social hatred and faces another charge of distributing leaflets calling for the forcible overthrow of the government. If he is found guilty, Jumayev could face up to seven years in prison. Akberdi has also been slapped with the charge of urging the overthrow of the government. But she is accused of doing this through Telegram, and this is an important distinction: she faces up to 10 years. Her trial has yet to begin. “I remember very clearly, the police investigator told me: ‘We’ll jail you and your husband, your relatives will spurn your children and they will end up in a children’s home,’” Akberdi told Eurasianet this month, following a hearing for her husband’s case. This trial appears to be the first in Kazakhstan in which a messaging app has featured so prominently. But with the government determined to vanquish all manifestations of dissent, it is unlikely to be the last. Akberdi told Eurasianet that she was apolitical before the pair were added to a Telegram-based opposition chat group without their consent. “To begin with we were irritated that someone had simply added us without asking. Then we asked what sort of group it was and [the participants] replied that it was for people fed up with the current regime,” said Akberdi. More problematically for Akberdi, the group in question was affiliated with Mukhtar Ablyazov, the Europe-based nemesis of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. In mid-March, a court in Astana designated Ablyazov’s Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, or DVK, an extremist organization. The ruling instantly raised the stakes for anybody dabbling in online opposition politics. Akberdi and Jumayev began posting in the DVK group on Telegram in the months running up to the court ruling. “I saw his program and liked it,” Akberdi said of Ablyazov, who is accused by the government of fleeing the country after bilking the bank he used to run of billions of dollars. Ablyazov insists he is the victim of a politicized stitch-up. Akberdi and Jumayev became enthusiastic posters in the DVK group, although...
