Burundi’s Chris Irakoze, 24, has come up with an app he has named “Bi-News” that enables users to read news in just one second. The invention is a result of a lot of curiosity, extensive research and some hacking, he says.
According to Irakoze, the app collects headlines and website links from every major information site 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,” he said.
Irakoze also admits engaging in some illegal practices, saying: “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.”
Although nobody is safe, the web enthusiast believes that it is certainly possible to protect sites maximally. First, one needs to understand how hackers attack. They use a login form whose password is too weak or by collecting parameters of a certain link from any page of a website. However, this can be avoided by creating relatively long passwords with various kinds of characters, mixing letters, numbers and punctuation marks.
Thus far, Irakoze has not earned from his invention though hopes this will change in the near future.