Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries
Are you concerned about your private information getting into the wrong hands out there on
the internet? You should be. An article in the New York Times dated March 29, 2009 gives us
all cause for concern.
According to the article: Researchers at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto have discovered a vast electronic spying operation that has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries. In less than two years the spying operation has infiltrated computers belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and government offices including the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York.
The spy operation dubbed “GhostNet” by the Toronto researchers uses malware that is able to 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 GhostNet intruders had gained control of the electronic mail server computers of the Dalai Lama’s organization. One recipient of an email from the Dalai Lama’s exile center was arrested upon her return to China and warned not to get involved with the exile center’s activities.
Three of the four control servers used by GhostNet were traced to different provinces in China — Hainan, Guangdong and Sichuan — while the fourth was found to be at a Web-hosting company based in Southern California. Last year, one of the researchers, Nart Villeneuve who is a “white-hat” hacker with “dazzling technical skills” linked the Chinese version of the Skype communications service to a Chinese government operation that was systematically eavesdropping on users’ instant-messaging sessions.
Shishir Nagaraja and Ross Anderson, two researchers from Cambridge, England who helped the Toronto researchers, wrote in their report titled, The Snooping Dragon: Social Malware Surveillance of the Tibetan Movement: “What Chinese spooks did in 2008, Russian crooks will do in 2010 and even low-budget criminals from less developed countries will follow in due course.”
Since sophisticated hackers always seem to be one step ahead of security companies, it appears that none of us is safe from having our computers broken into and data stolen. Maybe the best strategy is to assume that there is no privacy online and that all of our most sensitive personal information and data will eventually be available to anyone and everyone on the net.
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