Asek Timba

Don't trust, regularly verify. The greatest thing ever made is the internet.

#Cybersecurity #blockchain.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth. #ApostolicJourney #Cameroon https://t.co/bKteFZ3iWE

[Asek Timba @AsekTimba]

@CAF_Media Clown African Federation. Capital Disgrace. Football is won on the pitch not in offices.

[Microsoft Threat Intelligence @MsftSecIntel]

Microsoft Defender researchers uncovered a campaign that lured users into running trojanized gaming utilities (Xeno.exe or RobloxPlayerBeta.exe) distributed through browsers and chat platforms, leading to the deployment of a remote access trojan (RAT).

A malicious downloader staged a portable Java runtime and executed a malicious Java archive (JAR) file named jd-gui.jar. This downloader used PowerShell and living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBins) like cmstp.exe for stealthy execution. It evaded detection by deleting the initial downloader and by adding Microsoft Defender exclusions for the RAT components. It also added persistence using a scheduled task and startup script named world.vbs. Finally, it deployed the final payload, a multi-purpose malware that acted as loader, runner, downloader, and RAT.

The RAT connected to the IP address 79.110.49[.]15 for command and control (C2), enabling threat actors to perform various actions like data theft and additional payload deployment.

Microsoft Defender detects the malware and malicious behavior observed across the attack chain. To defend against this threat, follow these recommendations:
- Block/monitor outbound connections to listed domains/IP addresses and alerts on downloads of java[.]zip or jd-gui.jar from non-corporate sources.
- Hunt for the related processes and components.
- Audit Microsoft Defender exclusions and scheduled tasks for random names; remove malicious tasks and startup scripts.
- Isolate affected endpoints, collect endpoint detection and response (EDR) telemetry, and reset credentials for users active on compromised hosts.

Indicators of compromise:
- decompiler.exe (SHA-256: 48cd5d1ef968bf024fc6a1a119083893b4191565dba59592c541eb77358a8cbb)
- jd-gui.jar (SHA-256: a33a96cbd92eef15116c0c1dcaa8feb6eee28a818046ac9576054183e920eeb5)
- worldview.db-wal/StandardName.exe (SHA-256: 4442ba4c60a6fc24a2b2dfd041a86f601e03b38deab0300a6116fea68042003f)
- world.vbs (SHA-256: 65f003998af7dd8103607c8e18ef418b131ba7d9962bd580759d90f4ac51da36)
- powercat[.]dog:443; remote IP 79.110.49[.]15

[Asek Timba @AsekTimba]

@elonmusk @cb_doge Starlink is Spyware.

[Asek Timba @AsekTimba]

@elonmusk World's richest man is crying over his owns kind propaganda machine.

[Asek Timba @AsekTimba]

#CyberSecurity #PromptEngineering #AI

[Asek Timba @AsekTimba]

@StateDept Moronic Rubio

[Asek Timba @AsekTimba]

@StateDept Little rubio

[Asek Timba @AsekTimba]

@elonmusk @HumbleFlow Tarzan?

[Asek Timba @AsekTimba]

@elonmusk The slaves themselves ended slavery. 🇭🇹🇭🇹

[Sizwe SikaMusi @SizweLo]

In 1976, the South Korean car company Hyundai produced 10 000 cars.
That year, Ford produced 1.9 million and General Motors produced 4.8 million.
If South Korea had free trade in cars back then, Hyundai would’ve vanished overnight.

So, until 1988, the South Korean government applied heavy taxes on foreign cars and banned the import of all foreign-made cars while heavily subsidising the domestic car industry. This is known as “infant industry protection”.

This was because the South Korean government understood that allowing imports would’ve crushed the newborn domestic industry before it could achieve economies of scale and technological competence.

The ultimate objective of the protection was a temporary measure to create a learning period during which Korean companies could improve their quality and eventually become globally competitive. By the 1990s and 2000s, Hyundai and Kia were ready to compete on the world stage without these protections.

This model, as implemented successfully in Korea, is brilliant because it allows “latecomer” nations to break into industries with high barriers to entry and can lead to long-term economic growth and technological advancement as it reduces dependence on foreign goods and builds “national champions”.

However, mainstream economics preaches that nations must stick to their “comparative advantage”, that is, they should specialise in what they’re naturally best at producing. This implies that developing countries should stick to raw materials or low-skill labour-intensive activities such as textiles and agriculture because that’s their “comparative advantage.”

South Korea deliberately rejected this notion. It didn’t have a natural advantage in building cars in the 1970s. In fact, it had a massive comparative disadvantage. But instead of accepting its place in the global hierarchy, their government actively created a new comparative advantage in complex, high-value industries, such as automobiles, electronics, and shipbuilding.

In 1976, South Korea was objectively inefficient at making cars. Economists peddling “comparative advantage” theories would’ve advised them to import cars from the US and Japan and stick to exporting vegetables and pieces of cloth.

But the thing is, South Korea realised that a country’s capabilities can actually change over time through investment and technological acquisition. So, they bet on creating a new comparative advantage, while mainstream economics’ comparative advantage theory simply assumes that technology is a given and fixed.

In short, South Korea’s experience says that comparative advantage is a constructed outcome that can be strategically built, not just accepted as a given.

For developing nations, this is a powerful message that their economic destiny isn’t pre-ordained by their current resources, but can be shaped by intelligent, long-term industrial policy.

Now, South Africa’s supposed comparative advantage is mining platinum group metals alongside a bit of agriculture.

South Africa’s comparative advantage in PGMs and agriculture is based on a simple, static fact that it has an abundance of these natural resources. Following mainstream economic theory, Mzansi should just specialise in these areas because it can produce them more efficiently than other goods.

However, this creates several long-term problems, including the “resource curse” or “Dutch disease”, where countries with an abundance of natural resources tend to have lower economic growth and poorer development compared to countries with fewer resources.

For South Africa, mining platinum group minerals is about extracting raw materials and exporting them. The highest value in the PGM chain, like designing catalytic converters, manufacturing jewellery, or developing industrial applications, is captured by other, more technologically advanced countries. South Africa captures only a fraction of the total value.

This is where the South Korean model becomes directly relevant and challenging for South Africa.

South Korea had no obvious comparative advantage in cars or semiconductors in the 1960s. It consciously built one. The question for South Africa is: Should it accept its fate as a miner and farmer, or should it try to build new comparative advantages?

Well, unlike South Korea’s era of industrialisation, where the state forced banks to lend to manufacturing and technology upgrading, South Africa’s economy is overly financialised, with most lending going to consumer debt, speculative financial assets, short-term portfolio flows, etc.

Very little financing goes into fixed investment or industrial expansion.

A handful of major banks and investment houses set the tone for capital allocation, and their interests are aligned with asset management, offshore investment and most crucially, mining finance, not industrialisation.

The reason for this is that it is far easier and more profitable to make money from debt and financial instruments than from nurturing long-term industrial ventures with long payback periods.

This means South Africa’s lending institutions have no incentive to fund local industrialisation when they can chase high-return global assets.

This is the root difference. In South Korea in the 1960s – 1980s, banks were state-owned or tightly controlled, credit allocation was centrally planned, speculation was harshly punished and capital flight was illegal.
In simple terms, finance existed to serve industry.

In South Africa, on the other hand, finance is liberalised and deregulated, which gives it power to dictate economic policy and not the other way around.

The country’s industrial policy gets lip service while finance enjoys complete autonomy. Capital flight is legal and rampant, and the economy is oriented around shareholder returns, not national development.
Basically, industry is forced to serve finance.

This is far worse than poor governance and corruption because even if South Africa had zero corruption, streamlined regulation, and a professional bureaucracy, it still could not industrialise without redirecting finance.

This is because industrialisation requires patient, directed capital, long-term investment horizons, state coordination and protection from speculative finance. South Africa’s financial sector structure categorically prevents this.

In conclusion, South Africa’s industrial stagnation is structurally enforced by its financial architecture. In other words, South Africa is not deindustrialising because it is incompetent. It is deindustrialising because its financial sector profits from deindustrialisation.

[Asek Timba @AsekTimba]

@OldTrafordTimes James Milner

[Kris @kris]

Someone sent me this link to a new prediction market on Cronos. Does it look like free money to you?

https://t.co/udT8hRcttW

[Kemi Seba Officiel @KemiSeba1]

[EN DIRECT D’HAÏTI 🇭🇹KEMI SEBA APPELLE À UNE RÉVOLUTION DES CONSCIENCES CONTRE L’OLIGARCHIE NÉOCOLONIALE]

Invité et honoré à la faculté de droit du CAP Haïtien, Kemi Seba appelle à l’union de toutes les composantes d’Haiti, pour faire bloc face à l’oligarchie néocoloniale occidentale et l’élite corrompue endogène.

[Farida Bemba Nabourema @Farida_N]

When I traveled to Zambia, people asked why I have a Zambian name as a Togolese( Bemba). In DRC, they wondered if I had Congolese roots for the same reason. In Angola, same thing. And every time I land in Abuja, Nigerian immigration officers insist on seeing my Nigerian passport, convinced I’m from the North and they tell me “ Farida” is a Nigerian name. Funny enough I had a long argument with a Tanzanian politician that was adamant that my first name is Tanzanian.

What surprises me most is that even some Togolese ask if “Bemba” is my marital name, because to some, it doesn’t “sound Togolese.”

But here’s the truth: nationality is not ethnicity. As long as we Africans keep seeing our colonial borders as natural identities, we’ll keep dividing ourselves, questioning and disputing each other’s origins and right to belong.

Ethnic groups stretch far beyond these borders. The Fula people live from West to East Africa. Wolof names found in Senegal are also found among the Dinka in South Sudan.

My father’s full name is Nabourema Bemba Baldet. Nabourema was a name he created in the 70s, after Togo’s dictatorship banned so-called “foreign names” while Eyadema still named his own children Faure, Ernest, Emmanuel etc after French presidents and politicians that he admired.

The name was supposed to be Na-Boureima, meaning “Grandfather Boureima,” but a clerk misspelled it. Bemba was supposed to be Bamba, but the colonial administration changed the spelling to fit their language. It’s our clan name, and my father passed it down to all his children.

The reality is, many of us carry names that were altered or miswritten to fit colonial tongues. In Senegal, Cissé becomes Sessay in Gambia. In Guinea, Diallo becomes Jallow in Sierra Leone. Touré in Togo becomes Turay in The Gambia etc.

Even the concept of a “family name” didn’t exist in many African cultures. Names came from clans, tribes and in sometimes from mothers, not just fathers as it is the case with my mother’s tribe. That’s why siblings can have different surnames in our cultures.

So I say this: let’s reclaim who we are. Let’s stop seeing these passports and nationalities as the essence of our identity. As an African, I belong everywhere on this continent. That is what defines me.

[Rebecca Enonchong @africatechie]

If you are a watcher of African politics, you need to see this video!

👇🏾👇🏾

[Kris @kris]

https://t.co/pFc4Pz9nFR obtains a restricted dealer registration in Canada 🇨🇦

[Dibussi Tande @dibussi]

The daughter of the president of #Cameroon has been convicted in Geneva. The case sheds new light on the presidential family’s unofficial second home in a #Geneva hotel.
https://t.co/Rhl7LFp1iU

[Asek Timba @AsekTimba]

@DNIGabbard New low!

[Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina, CON, CGH @akin_adesina]

Africa must end the exports of its raw materials. The export of raw materials is the door to poverty. The export of value-added products is the highway to wealth. And Africa is tired of being poor.