The New York Times has yesterday published articles about Ghostnet – a vast electronic spying operation that has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world – including those of the Dalai Lama.
I quote from that article:
The researchers at the University of Toronto, had been asked by the office of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader whom China regularly denounces, to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware.
Their sleuthing opened a window into a broader operation that, in less than two years, has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York.
The researchers, who have a record of detecting computer espionage, said they believed that in addition to the spying on the Dalai Lama, the system, which they called GhostNet, was focused on the governments of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.
The newly reported spying operation is by far the largest to come to light in terms of countries affected.
This is also believed to be the first time researchers have been able to expose the workings of a computer system used in an intrusion of this magnitude.
Still going strong, the operation continues to invade and monitor more than a dozen new computers a week, the researchers said in their report, “Tracking ‘GhostNet’: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.” They said they had found no evidence that United States government offices had been infiltrated, although a NATO computer was monitored by the spies for half a day and computers of the Indian Embassy in Washington were infiltrated.
Disturbing enough to hear about this type of skulduggery, it is even more disturbing to learn of the implications of the capabilities of this malware for businesses and organisations in general.
The malware is remarkable both for its sweep — in computer jargon, it has not been merely “phishing” for random consumers’ information, but “whaling” for particular important targets — and for its Big Brother-style capacities. It can, for example, turn on the camera and audio-recording functions of an infected computer, enabling monitors to see and hear what goes on in a room. The investigators say they do not know if this facet has been employed.
The researchers were able to monitor the commands given to infected computers and to see the names of documents retrieved by the spies, but in most cases the contents of the stolen files have not been determined. Working with the Tibetans, however, the researchers found that specific correspondence had been stolen and that the intruders had gained control of the electronic mail server computers of the Dalai Lama’s organization.
The electronic spy game has had at least some real-world impact, they said. For example, they said, after an e-mail invitation was sent by the Dalai Lama’s office to a foreign diplomat, the Chinese government made a call to the diplomat discouraging a visit. And a woman working for a group making Internet contacts between Tibetan exiles and Chinese citizens was stopped by Chinese intelligence officers on her way back to Tibet, shown transcripts of her online conversations and warned to stop her political activities.
The Toronto researchers said they had notified international law enforcement agencies of the spying operation, which in their view exposed basic shortcomings in the legal structure of cyberspace. The F.B.I. declined to comment on the operation.
At the same time, two computer researchers at Cambridge University in Britain who worked on the part of the investigation related to the Tibetans, are releasing an independent report. They do fault China, and they warned that other hackers could adopt the tactics used in the malware operation.
It is interesting that the Dalai Lama and his activities are of such concern that they need to be infiltrated, tracked and undermined. Clearly he is of much greater import than the dismissive statements made by the Chinese – and to some extent the British government who recently formally (and, in my opinion, shamefully) recognised the supremacy of China in Tibet.
There is no integrity in denouncing this man who espouses peaceful protest and good wishes to his fellow man by saying he incites violence and creating other fictions about him. The use of computer malware underlines this lack of integrity and adds a layer of immorality to the campaign against him.
Now the polarisation going on around His Holiness extends further into our society.
We learn that this malware can, for example, turn on the camera and audio-recording functions of an infected computer, enabling monitors to see and hear what goes on in a room.
The case in point is the Dalai Lama but obviously the implications are enormous if launched against businesses and organisations. At a time when the UK government has invested so much in creating electronic records and databases across national organisations, requiring us increasingly to make electronic payments of tax and other payments it is chilling to think about the vulnerabilities we are building into our society.
And how easy it is for immorality and illegality to infiltrate the very fabric of it – in ways which are so very insidiously unknown and mysterious to the vast majority of us.
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