Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ross Rader <ross () tucows com>
Date: March 29, 2009 8:25:18 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Fwd: Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage  
Network.

Hi David, more on the Chinese Ghostnet from Ron Diebert, one of the  
chief instigators at UofT. Citizen Lab has been doing great work in  
this and related areas for years. The dispatch below includes a link  
to their original report, which I hadn't seen in the other notes.  
Please feel free to share with IP if you wish.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Ronald Deibert <r.deibert () utoronto ca>
> Date: March 28, 2009 4:49:15 PM GMT-04:00
> To: Ronald Deibert <r.deibert () utoronto ca>
> Subject: Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.
>
> Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.
>
> The report has now been covered in an exclusive story by the New  
> York Times' John Markoff.  Download the New York Times story here
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/technology/29spy.html
>
> Researchers at the Information Warfare Monitor uncovered a suspected  
> cyber espionage network of over 1,295 infected hosts in 103  
> countries.  This finding comes at the close of a 10-month  
> investigation of alleged Chinese cyber spying against Tibetan  
> institutions that consisted of fieldwork, technical scouting, and  
> laboratory analysis.
>
> Close to 30% of the infected hosts are considered high-value and  
> include computers located at ministries of foreign affairs,  
> embassies, international organizations, news media, and NGOs.  The  
> investigation was able to conclude that  Tibetan computer systems  
> were compromised by multiple infections that gave attackers  
> unprecedented access to potentially sensitive information,   
> including  documents from the private office of the Dalai Lama.
>
> Who is ultimately in control of the GhostNet system? While our  
> analysis reveals that numerous politically sensitive and high value  
> computer systems were compromised in ways that circumstantially  
> point to China as the culprit, we do not know the exact motivation  
> or the identity of the attacker(s), or how to accurately  
> characterize this network of infections as a whole.  One of the  
> characteristics of cyber-attacks of the sort we document here is the  
> ease by which attribution can be obscured.
>
> Regardless of who or what is ultimately in control of GhostNet, it  
> is the capabilities of exploitation, and the strategic intelligence  
> that can be harvested from it, which matters most. Indeed, although  
> the Achilles’ heel of the GhostNet system allowed us to monitor and  
> document its far-reaching network of infiltration, we can safely  
> hypothesize that it is neither the first nor the only one of its kind.
>
> As Information Warfare Monitor principal investigators Ron Deibert  
> and Rafal Rohozinski say in the foreword to the report, “This report  
> serves as a wake-up call.  At the very least, a large percentage of  
> high-value targets compromised by this network demonstrate the  
> relative ease with which a technically unsophisticated approach can  
> quickly be harnessed to create a very effective spynet…These are  
> major disruptive capabilities that the professional information  
> security community, as well as policymakers, need to come to terms  
> with rapidly.”
>
> Download the full report on 29 March 2009 at
> http://www.infowar-monitor.net/ghostnet/
>
>
> Ronald J. Deibert
> Director, The Citizen Lab
> Munk Centre for International Studies
> University of Toronto
> r.deibert () utoronto ca
> http://deibert.citizenlab.org/

best,


Ross Rader
General Manager, Hover
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