RESEARCHERS HAVE uncovered a vast global espionage network, based mainly in China, which hacked into computers and stole documents from government and private offices in 103 countries, including those of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan exile movement.
The report’s initial focus was allegations of Chinese cyber-espionage against the Tibetan community in exile, and eventually led to a much wider network of compromised machines, the internet-based research group from the Munk Centre for International Studies in Toronto said.
“Up to 30 per cent of the infected hosts are considered high-value targets and include computers located at ministries of foreign affairs, embassies, international organisations, news media and NGOs (non-governmental organisations),” it said.
Cyber-spies employ high-tech methods – Trojan horse software, disguised as common software programmes such as PowerPoint or Word.
Once the hackers infiltrate the systems, they gain control using malware – software they install on the compromised computers – and send and received data from them.
The researchers dubbed the cyberspy system GhostNet and said it found evidence of hacking into the foreign ministries of Iran, Bangladesh, Latvia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Barbados and Bhutan.
They also discovered a Nato computer being monitored and hacked systems in the embassies of India, South Korea, Indonesia, Romania, Cyprus, Malta, Thailand, Taiwan, Portugal, Germany and Pakistan. They said the system was mostly Chinese-based, but said it had not conclusively been able to detect the identity or motivation of the hackers.
They said that attributing all these malware operations to intelligence gathering by the Chinese state was “wrong and misleading”.
“China is presently the world’s largest internet population. The sheer number of young digital natives online can more than account for the increase in Chinese malware,” the researchers said.
The researchers were amazed at the capabilities of the spyware. In some cases it was able to remotely access and use the camera and audio-recording functions of the hacked PCs to monitor those under surveillance as they sat in the room.
In the past, the US House of Representatives has said that intelligence gained through cyber-espionage has allowed China to copy many scientific and technological breakthroughs from the West.
A separate section of the report connected to the Tibetans was compiled by two computer researchers at Cambridge University in Britain. They discovered that the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centres in India, Brussels, London and New York were among those infiltrated.
They said that the office of the Dalai Lama began to suspect it was under surveillance while setting up meetings between the exiled Tibetan leader and foreign dignitaries. They sent an e-mail invitation on behalf of the Dalai Lama to a foreign diplomat, but before they could follow it up with a courtesy telephone call, the diplomat’s office was contacted by Beijing and warned not to go ahead with the meeting.