By John Okello Lapok
One of the posh hotels in Kampala-Serena Hotel is reported to be battling to restore it’s network system after unknown goons hacked into it.
What is happening now is that the management has reportedly hired experts from the US to come help restore the system with advanced safeguards. The amount of money being spent on the exercise is colossal, according to Inspectors.
Our Inspectors revealed that the hair-raising incident even saw the minister for trade and industry Francis Mwebesa visiting the hotel which is believed to be one of the best in the land.
The minister we’re told was at the hotel on Thursday evening where he allegedly interacted with the management about the issue.
“This dot.com era has come to destroy us. It’s not doing anything good for development” an inspector quoted one of the hotel bosses telling the minister when he visited.
Our Inspectors revealed that the incident occured about a week ago but management has swung into action to try and restore the system.
“What is happening now is that everything is being done manually. When you have meal, they simply write as opposed to soft (computerized) system. The hackers have really disorganised the hotel. But US experts flew in and are already working on restoration of the system” says an Inspector adding that even security is investigating the same.
“One school of thought is that this was an inside job. Another opinion is that that it’s an external attack like we have seen other institutions being attacked. But investigations are being carried out” an inspector says.
We’re told, of recent, there were some transfers made at the hotel. In addition, the stiff competition within the industry is also something being looked at to find out whether they are not involved to sabotage Serena.
To prove how determined the hackers are to bring down the network, they have even used this as an opportunity to con unsuspecting public by advertising jobs at Serena. For example in a leaked purported advert bearing the hotel logo, the goons have advertised jobs for waitresses (5), accountants (2), drivers (2), technicians (3), plumbers (2), mechanical workers (4), and two electricians.
The hackers asked the applicants to to send their CVs and testimonials to the purported human resource manager a one Brian by yesterday Friday November 25.
“As you can see, there are many people who have been bringing their CVs at the hotel thinking it’s true! There’s a lot of confusion because of what has happened” an inspector says.
Cyber attackers have become common in the recent past following the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine aimed at (according to Russia) de-militarizing and de-nazifying the Wheat producing country.
The latest institution to be affected is European parliament whose system was this week hacked into. Another country-Luthiania also suffered similar attacks recently which crippled it’s banking sector. There were also reports that the same hackers attacked into one of the telecom giants here affecting it’s mobile money system. Efforts to get a comment from the hotel manager were futile by press time.
Watch the space!
