A Year's Further Research On an Espionage Network

Mortimer.CA writes "Last year researchers discovered a giant electronic spying operation they dubbed GhostNet. Now, after a further year's worth of research, Infowar Monitor has released a new report. The report (Scribbed PDF) documents a complex ecosystem of cyber espionage that systematically targeted and compromised computer systems in India, the Offices of the Dalai Lama, the United Nations, and several other countries. While the servers are in China, the report's authors say that there is 'no evidence in this report of the involvement of the People's Republic of China or any other government in the shadow network.' Furthermore, the 'intruders even stole documents related to the travel of NATO forces in Afghanistan, illustrating that even though the Indian government was the primary target of the attacks, one gap in computer security can leave many nations exposed.'"

Comments

two words

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Plausible. Deniability.

Re:Ooooh! The Dalai Lama!

[blair1q]

Or the Chinese government is going after the Dalai Lama in a crudely obsessive way to make you think it's someone going after the Dalai Lama to implicate the Chinese government.

Re:and there is never a case of US involvement?

[russotto]

so build into all US produced ( or at least with US label ) network devices a small Trojan Boot Loader hidden with dirty programming.

It's plausible, but it's a works-once kind of thing. As soon as you make any major use of it, it's going to be found out, and everyone else is going to go looking for it. So you have to save it for when it's really valuable, but doing that means you risk it being found anyway and never using it.

It['s

And you end up with a fifth colon paid by the very IT user.

What happened to colons two through four?

Re:Let me refer all of you to this...

[osu-neko]

Then tell me again how the Chinese intelligence services aren't funding and running Ghostnet.

Now now, let's not be hasty, there's no evidence in this report of the involvement of the People's Republic of China. It could be anyone on the long list of organizations who happen to hate the Dalai Lama, Chinese dissidents, etc. ;)

Re:Tibet is part of China

[deaddeng]

As Americans, we should show our condemnation for China's illegal occupation of Tibet by returning California, Texas, and New Mexico to Mexico, and Hawaii to its indigenous people. I think we should keep the rest, which we either bought from the French or stole fair and square.