Worancha ወራንቻ

Ethiopian Satellite Television Executive Director Neamin Zeleke is seen in his office in Alexandria, Va., Monday, March 9, 2015. More than a year after researchers revealed an electronic eavesdropping campaign aimed at D.C.-area journalists, the hackers are at it again. Internet watchdog group Citizen Lab said in a report published Monday that hackers who attacked a U.S. employee of Ethiopian Satellite Television in 2013 have recently launched a new round of attacks using upgraded espionage software. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci) More than a year after researchers revealed an electronic eavesdropping campaign aimed at D.C.-area journalists, the hackers are at it again. Internet watchdog group Citizen Lab said in a report published Monday that hackers who attacked a U.S. employee of Ethiopian Satellite Television in 2013 have recently launched a new round of attacks using upgraded espionage software. Citizen Lab, which is based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Aff

Ethopia's despotic regime has become the world's first "turnkey surveillance state," thanks to technology sold to it by western companies, including, it seems, Italy's Hacking Team, whose RCS spyware product is implicated in an attack on exiled, US-based journalists reporting on government corruption. Ethiopian Satellite Television is a consistent thorn in the ruling elite's side. Journalists there were repeatedly targeted with what appears to be a weapon from Hacking Team. Hacking Team has never confirmed that it supplies weapons to Ethiopia, and it claims that its weapons have built-in monitoring systems to prevent abuse by its customers. Ron Deibert from the University of Toronto's Citizenlab has  sent an open letter to Hacking Team  formally notifying it of the  Citizenlab report  on Ethiopia's use of spyware to attack journalists. Ethiopia ranks second in African nations for jailed journalists (Eritrea comes first). Dissidents and others

(Reuters/Kacper Pempel/Files) The Ethiopian government appears again to be using Internet spying tools to attempt to eavesdrop on journalists based in suburban Washington, said security researchers who call such high-tech intrusions a serious threat to human rights and press freedoms worldwide. The journalists, who work for Ethiopian Satellite Television in Alexandria, Va., provide one of the few independent news sources to their homeland through regular television and radio feeds — to the irritation of the government there, which has accused journalists of "terrorism" and repeatedly jammed the signals of foreign broadcasters. The struggle increasingly has stretched into cyberspace, where malicious software sold to governments for law enforcement purposes has been observed targeting the journalists, researchers said. The most recent documented case, from December, came several months after The Washington Post first detailed the government's apparent deployment of

(New York) – The Ethiopian government has renewed efforts to silence independent voices abroad by using apparent foreign spyware, Human Rights Watch said today. The Ethiopian authorities should immediately cease digital attacks on journalists, while foreign surveillance technology sellers should investigate alleged abuses linked to their products. Independent researchers at the Toronto-based research center Citizen Lab on March 9, 2015,  reported  new attempts by  Ethiopia  to hack into computers and accounts of Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT) employees based in the United States. The attacks bear similarities to  earlier attempts  to target Ethiopian journalists outside Ethiopia dating back to December 2013. ESAT is an independent, diaspora-run television and radio station. “Ethiopia’s government has over the past year intensified its assault on media freedom by systematically trying to silence journalists,” said Cynthia Wong , senior  Internet  researcher at Human Rights Wa

Girma Seifu Maru, the sole opposition-party representative in Ethiopia’s 547-member Parliament, in a cafeteria near his private office in Addis Ababa. He says he won’t run for re-election in May.   PHOTO:  PETTERIK WIGGERS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia—The sole voice of opposition in Ethiopia’s 547-member national legislature will soon fall silent—the latest in a long line of people who have given up the fight as the government actively mutes dissent while pursuing populist economic expansion. Since 2010, Girma Seifu Maru has tried to raise his voice against political abuses while 546 fellow legislators consistently support the government. But in February, the government electoral board replaced the leadership of Mr. Girma’s Unity for Democracy and Justice party with its own people, effectively making him a man without a party and further weakening an enfeebled opposition. The board said the party violated its own internal bylaws for appointing leaders.