Digital Prank

It has been reported that Chinese cyber-spy network has been breaking into computers across the world accessing documents, files from government and private organizations including Dalai Lama’s office. “GhostNet”, the name of the spy network has penetrated 103 countries accessing systems containing sensitive information in top political, economic and media offices according Canadian group Information Warfare Monitor (IWM). The Canadian researchers found this as a result of conducting a 10-month investigation over the cyber-espionage claims against the Tibetan exiles.Ghost Net is said to have infected 1295 computers at NATO, foreign affairs ministries, embassies, banks and news organizations.

Hackers from the spy network managed to install malware which not only steals in formations from documents and emails but also turning on webcams and microphones and recording conversations. Please find the full report on Ghostnet available here. [via The Dark Visitor]. Greg Walton who is one of the investigators told, “We uncovered real-time evidence of malware that had penetrated Tibetan computer systems, extracting sensitive documents from the private office of Dalai Lama”.  After initial investigations when the group widened it research it found that the China-based cyber espionage had hacked computer systems of embassies of India, Pakistan, Germany, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea and many other countries. Though the research results points to China as the main source of GhostNet, the exact identity or the motivation behind the attack is still unknown and still investigations are going on to find out whether Chinese Government is involved in master-minding the attack.