A Hacker Turned A Reading App Developer – Meet Burundi’s Chris Irakoze
“In the past, I have penetrated five Burundi sites and over ten African sites although some never realized it. I never meant any harm; I merely did it to acquire experience and sharpen my internet security skills. The two programmes which I used include ‘ACUNETIX’ to check a site’s vulnerability and ‘SQLMap’ to make use of the security gaps detected,” says the 24 years old, Chris Irakoze from Burundi.
Irakoze started out with hacking into various websites, a vice that would not be taken kindly by any government authority around the world. But he has since ceased from such unethical behaviour and is now involved in something more positive, like developing useful mobile apps.
Irakoze is credited for developing an app dubbed “Bi-News,” that allows users to get news from various leading news sources, in less than one second. As he puts it, he came up with the “Bi-News” app after having some curiosity, doing extensive research and some hacking. The app works by collecting news headlines and website links from all the major news sites in Burundi.
“Browsing most of the sites and listening to the radio when I woke up daily actually made my head spin. This gave me an idea on how to develop something that would make life easier and allow access to nearly everything. It took me three weeks of mixing programmes and torturing my brains each evening,” Irakoze says.
Irakoze goes further to say that although one’s security cannot be fully guaranteed online, he recommends people to take up measures to ensure maximum possible security is obtained. He says to understand online security one must first understand how the mind of a hacker works. Hackers use a login form with a weak password or collect parameters of a given link from any page of the site.
He recommends for one to be on the safe side, creating a long password that has various types of characters, numbers, punctuation marks and mixing letters would go a long way in ensuring you achieve the maximum online security possible.
As of now, Irakoze has yet to make any revenue from his invention, but he is confident things will turn around in the near future.