By Dr Clifford Chitupa Mashiri
In view of these hacking confessions into gmail accounts, could Zimbabwe’s Sunday Mail editor Edmund Kudzayi end up being indicted to stand trial in the United States given the far reaching implications of what looks like fiddling with international communications conducted through Facebook and Google, which are American firms?
His statement (“Edmund Kudzayi: How I joined Team Zanu PF“) appears to contain serious self-incriminating evidence for possible breach of international laws governing emails.
For instance, he says “I immediately changed the password to the email account, the account recovery phone number and the account recovery email address to my personal and alias (Mai Jukwa) details”;
“I managed to regain access to the account using my mobile number since I had setup two step verification”;
“I passed on the IP addresses to the MoD (ministry of defence) contact.” and
“Through social engineering I managed to persuade Google to restore the deleted emails. The original incriminating emails are back in the account and I remain in control of the email.”
In the ongoing saga in Harare, the State argues that a gmail account called [email protected] was registered using Tawanda’s mobile number before the creation of the Baba Jukwa Facebook account.
The other issue regards the regime’s paranoia since the Wikileaks disclosures incriminating Zanu-PF ‘wievels’.
Could Zanu-PF be spying on diplomats and foreign based-nationals by snooping into their email accounts with the help of those who have so far identified themselves?
What has prompted me to say so is that someone has just emailed me from Zimbabwe saying they have been experiencing password problems with their gmail account, albeit eventually managed to send their message, presumably under close surveillance by Mr Mugabe’s security guys.
From the horde of email contacts harvested by the hacker, could the Zanu-PF regime be reading as you type your message, let alone gleaning through the email accounts of Zimbabwe’s and international personalities to cause maximum embarrassment in their succession battles?
I hope I will be proved wrong.
You can contact the writer on [email protected]
