Kabarak University Regains Facebook Page After Hackers Demand Ksh68K
Other than uploading its official profile picture and cover photo, Kabarak University shared a picture of the entrance to the institution with the hashtag #WeAreKabarak as a watermark.
Marvin Chege 
Kabarak University on Tuesday, May 9 took back control of its Facebook account after it came under attack from a group of cybercriminals.
Spot checks by Viral Tea on its verified account with over 47,000 likes and over 73,000 followers showed normal posting of the day-to-day activities in one of Kenya's top private chartered institutions of higher learning that provides holistic Christian-based quality education, training, research and outreach activities for the service of God and humanity.
Other than uploading its official profile picture and cover photo, Kabarak University shared a picture of the entrance to the institution with the hashtag #WeAreKabarak as a watermark.
The account was hacked a week ago by a suspected Indonesian teenager who demanded Ksh68,000 ransom from the tertiary institution in order to get it back.
A screenshot of Kabarak University's official Facebook account regained from hackers. /VIRALTEAKE
The teenager wrote, "I will not return this account, but I challenge all of you to reclaim this account immediately-regards a student from one of Jakarta's IT-based high schools, (Indonesia)."
Vice Chancellor, Prof. Henry Kiplangat stated on Saturday, May 6 that the misleading information and images shared rampantly by the teenager contravened the Biblical Christian values of the university.
He, however, assured their stakeholders and the general public that necessary measures were being undertaken to take action against the perpetrators, regaining control of the page and preventing any further unauthorized access.
"We urge our followers and prospective students to disregard information posted by these criminals and to contact us directly through our official website or other verified channels. It is important to note that any information or advertisements posted on our Facebook page by these criminals do not represent our institution, and we dissociate ourselves from them entirely.
"We understand that this situation has caused significant disruption to our online presence through our Facebook page, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to resolve this issue," the statement read in part.
The VC affirmed that the university would heighten its cyber security measures to prevent further breaches.
"Since our official page was hacked, we as the Kabarak University have decided to surrender this page to this scammer and we've been ordered to create another page.
"We've forwarded this case to the concerned authorities and the action is being undertaken. We do apologize for any inconvenience brought by the malicious act. We've decided to suspend the ICT manager till further notice. Follow our new page for new updates from the University," added the university.
The teenager on Monday, May 8 had threatened to post pornographic content on the page while he was still in control, having gone overboard to post information that was contrary to the values of the university.
Lesson Learnt On Safeguarding Your Facebook Account & Page
Recovering a Facebook page is usually more tedious than recovering a typical Facebook account. The reason is that it has no password, username, email address, or phone number you can use to reset it; it’s mostly tied to the admins’ personal account.
Luckily, Facebook has a step-by-step procedure to recover and secure your account. Review your timeline in order to take note of any suspicious activity.
This includes; the change of the email address or password, change of profile details such as name or birthday, friend requests from unknown accounts, sent messages that you did not write and posts or ads that you didn't create.
Visit https://www.facebook.com/hacked in order to secure your account. Facebook will ask you to change your password and review recent login activity.
Further, log out of all sessions and report the suspicious activities to the service provider, in this case to Facebook. Secure your account by enabling two-factor authentication and using strong passwords.
A Facebook page is only accessible through the personal account of the admins. So, if you no longer have access to the page, an admin's personal account might have been hacked.
