The Sunday News
Stanford Chiwanga Online News Editor
TWO young Bulawayo prodigies have shamed doubters and IT and computer programmers who dismissed them as a bunch of nobodies by using the misgiving to create Zimbabwe’s first-ever free open source antimalware scanner for computers. The antimalware, which is still being “polished” and will soon be upgraded to become an antivirus is aptly named Mthwakazi Defender (M-Defender in short) and is expected to compete with the best antivirus and anti-spyware security softwares in the world.
The two boys, Trevor Sibanda (18) who completed his Advanced Level at Gifford High School and Clifford Mthemba a Computer Science student at Nust are already hard at work creating another antimalware to protect USB devices.
Chronicle and Sunday News Online News Editor Stanford Chiwanga sat down with the boys for a chit chat. Below is the transcript of their conversation.
Q. What is Mthwakazi Defender?
A. M-Defender is Zimbabwe’s first, free, open source antimalware scanner for Windows and Linux. It is currently in the beta stage of development and can protect against over 200 000 malicious files. It was started in March 2014 and first released in May 2014. It was developed by Bulawayo developers, Trevor Sibanda and Clifford J Mthemba.
Q. Why such a catchy name?
A. Mthwakazi means two things to M-Defender, location and diversity. We chose this name as it refers to the location from which the project originates – Bulawayo, the heart of Mthwakazi and because Mthwakazi means diversity, we hope to achieve diversity by making Mthwakazi Defender open-source.
Q. What inspired you to create the antimalware scanner?
A. We always had a desire to understand how certain types of software work, antivirus solutions being one of them. So we did some research on the field in hopes to extend our skill. We were quickly shot down by several programmers from Zimbabwe who told us that we did not have the abilities, or resources to start such a project especially considering that we were very young and no one has ever done something valuable in the Bulawayo IT industry. We told them we would prove them wrong . . . a few months later we had created Mthwakazi Defender.
Q. When did you launch the software and has it gained popularity?
A. We released version 1.0 beta on Monday 12 May 2014 via our Facebook and Twitter pages. In the first two days of its release we had over 100 downloads with most of the downloads being from Zimbabwe. A day later, we were receiving emails from people all over the country commending us on the project and other students from Nust, UZ, MSU and Bulawayo Polytechnic were providing feedback and contributing to the project.
Q. Tell me more about the response.
A. People were truly impressed, especially those from Bulawayo who felt M-Defender is something they needed to re-assert the fact that Bulawayo is alive and will be the centre of technology and innovation in Zimbabwe. We also received a lot of interest and positive criticism from other programmers from around the world who have shown interest in the project and would like to contribute.
Q. Is this the first of its kind in Zimbabwe and Africa?
A. Yes, Mthwakazi Defender is the first publicly available open source antimalware scanner in Africa.
Q. What evidence do you have to support your claims?
A. We were only aware of the idea of it being Zimbabwe’s first antimalware scanner from the feedback we got after we made the project available to the public. After some research, we found that a group of developers from Kenya were working on a closed source antivirus solution called Bunifu Sniper Antivirus. Further research showed that no developers from Africa had made such a project publicly available. We concluded that we were Zimbabwe’s first and Africa’s second antimalware creators even though Binufu Sniper was released to the public five days after Mthwakazi Defender was released. Because Mthwakazi Defender is open-source it is the first of its kind in Africa.
Q. How different is your software from others out there? How efficient is it?
A. The antivirus industry has been around for over 30 years now and any form of protection is only as good as the amount of knowledge there is on what to protect against. You cannot stop a criminal unless you know what a criminal is. In measuring antimalware efficiency it ultimately boils down to how effective the antimalware can detect malicious files on a user’s computer. Mthwakazi Defender is in the beta stage of development. It currently has a detection rate of over 200 000 malwares. That includes viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, malicious Microsoft Word and PDF documents. Because of this we use the technically correct term of antimalware, not antivirus. Compared to other international products which have been around since the late 1980’s this is exceedingly effective. On a local level, we are not yet aware of any other product with a similar detection rate. Compared to likes of Kaspersky and McAfee who have millions of malwares they can identify, we still have a long way to go.
Q. Some people might use your creation to make money at your expense. Have you patented your product to prevent this?
A. Mthwakazi Defender is an open-source project licensed under the GNU-GPL version 2 licence. Placing a patent on the software was not yet necessary as this would go against the openness of the project. Anyone can take the source code and edit the program’s functionality provided that their works are also made open-source and this protects us against anyone incorporating any of our work into non open-source commercial products and making money of it. In future we might patent Mthwakazi Defender to protect it.
Q. Please explain more about this open-source version?
A. We currently have the open source antimalware scanner which scans your computer and identifies any malicious files which might be on your computer and it deletes them from your computer. The beta version is a minimalistic interface so users can test M-Defender. We also plan to release a light weight pro-active version that will protect from malware from USB devices and malware downloaded off the internet before we release the full version of Mthwakazi Defender which can compete at an international level.
Q. How are you going to make money from your creation?
A. Although Mthwakazi Defender is open-source we have a great business model for it. We are aiming at having as many local computers as possible running M-Defender by year end eliminating competition such as Indonesian Smadav from the scene before we start commercialising it. We want to gain the people’s trust first through merit. The antivirus industry is a 66 billion dollar industry with the leaders of industry such as Avast, AVG and Symnatec investing hundreds of millions of dollars into research every year. We are not in a position to go against these giants, so we are playing a different ball game. We will steal the ball first then start making money off it. Our only form of income till then will be from well-wishers who would like to see the project develop into something bigger than it is. All those who would like to contribute can email us at [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Q. How many other projects have you done?
A. We have worked on several projects individually, as a team we have worked on Mthwakazi Defender and KSMS. KSMS (Kings School Management System) is an application we designed due to the growing demand as schools are moving to integrate e-solutions in the school. KSMS is for primary and secondary schools and allows easy management of student enrolment and payment records for schools reducing paperwork in the office. We are set to have it launched in several schools in Bulawayo later this year.
Q. Any future projects you are likely to undertake?
A. We have several projects planned for the future which will benefit Zimbabwe and establish it as an IT powerhouse. All we can say for now is you’ll be hearing more of us.
Q. Where did you get the resources to create the antimalware?
A. All work put into the M-Defender project so far has come out of the shallow pockets of the developers. We were planning on releasing an online scanner and Android version of M-Defender, however, due to lack of funds, we were not able to do so.
Q. Do you have a lab-like place where you work on your projects?
A. We frequently met at Cliff’s place every other Saturday to work on the project but most of the work was by communicating via email.
