Researchers at the University of Toronto traced pieces of malicious code found on more than 1,200 computers worldwide and discovered that it originated from China.
The Globe and Mail reported that the software had tapped into top secret documents from governments in 103 countries. Most troubling was the discovery of said software on the computers of Tibetan exiles, leading to the presumption that a goal of this spy campaign was to acquire information regarding the Dalai Lama.
The spy network, dubbed "GhostNet" was uncovered by Canadian researches at the Munk Institute for International Studies in the University of Toronto.
The researchers have notified international intelligence agencies and it is presumed that further investigation is being undertaken.
The Canadian researcher responsible, a Mr. Villeneuve, was sifting through approximately 1GB of indiscernable characters when he decided to paste them into Google. Upon doing so, it is reported that such action led him to one of the machines responsible for the malicious code. Upon changing a character within the code, he stumbled upon another server, in another country and so on and so forth.
The publication of the research paper can be found on Scribd.
The Chinese government has stated that it is as much against cyber-terrorism as everyone else, and has not sanctioned any such operations.
36 Comments - Add comment