Shadow cyber spy network discovered

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

A complex cyber espionage network that penetrated a variety of important organisations across the world has been discovered.

According to researchers, the network has infiltrated the UN, the Indian Defence Ministry, the Pakistan Embassy in the US and the Office of the Dalai Lama.

A report from the Information Warfare Monitor and the Shadowserver Foundation said they had evidence of "links between the shadow network and two individuals living in Chengdu" - a city in China.

The individuals were identified by email addresses and are thought to be part of China's "underground hacking community". The network was outlined in a report called Shadows in the Cloud.

"The social media clouds of cyberspace we rely upon today have a dark, hidden core," said Professor Ron Diebert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre, launching the report.

"There is a vast, subterranean ecosystem to cyberspace within which criminal and espionage networks thrive."

He said the network had reached into the "upper echelons of the Indian security establishment" and should act as a "wake up call" to governments to co-operate on cybersecurity.

The report said that the network - known as a botnet - exploited social networking and cloud computing platforms, "including Google, Baidu, Yahoo and Twitter" to infect computers with malicious software, or malware.

This allowed hackers to take control of the PCs of several foreign ministries and embassies across the world.

A more complex network of "command and control" computers was used to control the infect computers.

The researchers said that they had also recovered a number of documents that were in the possession of the Indian government, including two documents marked "secret", six as "restricted", and five as "confidential".

In an eight month investigation, the report admitted there was no proof the Chinese government were involved. But the report questioned whether the Chinese government would take action to remove the network.

China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said the country was "firmly opposed" to hacking.