Yesterday I wrote about electoral.govmu.org and its tool to verify voting registration. Folks on facebook checked the tool & a few sent me feedback. I also posted the article on the Mauritius Internet Users discussion list.

I saw a reply that prompted me to share it with others who are not subscribed on the mailing list, but would be interested with this member’s findings.

The clip of Viré Mam (^^,)

If you replace “o” in “govmu” by a zero, i.e electoral.g0vmu.org, you end up with the famous Viré Mam clip on Youtube.

In various presentations, articles and even in an IT Observation Report to the MNIC¹, I highlighted how fake domains can be registered to mimic the Government. The latter one, IT Observation Report was submitted to MNIC State Lawyers and I wrote certain of my findings to the ICT Minister in a letter; I did elaborate several ways the IT infrastructure of the Government can be exploited. However, it’s a blind eye & deaf ear, maybe I am not a foreign expert, so my words and those of other local professionals have little value.

The domain g0vmu.org is registered as private.

Naked woman on mu.org

The same member also alerted that following a press article mentioning the Mauritius Government portal has migrated to gov.mu.org he verified the same. He could not find any website at gov.mu.org but instead found the painting of a semi-naked woman at mu.org.

Who cares?

User group attempts at helping the Mauritius ICT Ministry are constantly turned down or given a blind eye. To note it’s been 3 weeks since I contacted Infotech Team for a Linux & Open Source presentation for the upcoming Infotech 2014. None of my two emails received a reply.

I sent an email to CERT-MU regarding Joomla vulnerabilities on the Mauritius Revenue Authority website; yet no reply from them.

One last piece of advice

We’re only at the beginning of a Government website migration towards govmu.org and we can already feel the negative consequences. It’s a headbang ahead. I would have rather supported the ICT Ministry in fighting & getting hands on gov.mu. Sadly, they are not cooperative.

One last piece of advice to my folks working in the Ministry, never tell me who advised registering govmu.org, I’ll curse a lot. Secondly, if you still care about the potential of local professionals, you better grab your hands on gouv.mu while it is still available. Instead of being a global joke with govmu.org, it would be better to have an official French portal under www.gouv.mu like that of the French Government having various sub-domains under gouv.fr:

• legifrance.gouv.fr
• impots.gouv.fr
• amendes.gouv.fr
• finances.gouv.fr

Else, you could also have gouvernement.mu which is still available.

I understand the issue with gov.mu is the hefty and un-ethical price-tag associated with the three-letter domain. If only you could listen to the proper channel, you’d get better advice how to circumvent the problem.

[1] MNIC, Mauritius National Identity Card. Note that the official website www.mnic.mu is down since approximately a month now.

Additional reading: A technical analysis of the gov.mu domain name migration by S. Moonesamy.

Update #1

As posted by another member of the Mauritius Internet Users Group, govmu.net redirects to “Vire Mam 2” on Youtube.

Quote from an email sent to the MIU discussion list:

.org is not restricted to non-profit organisations. govmu.org is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. govmu.org is managed by the National Computer Board. The disaster management plan is starting to look like a disaster.