[LINK] GhostNet

stephen at melbpc.org.au stephen at melbpc.org.au
Sun Mar 29 20:04:40 AEDT 2009


Brenda forwards,

> http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001636.html
> has a good explanation of the conficker/downadup worm 

'Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries'

(Nb1, "Ghostnet, can turn on cameras and audio-recording functions ..")
(Nb2, no mention, in either news reports, re specific operating systems) 

by JOHN MARKOFF nytimes.com Published: March 28, 2009 (also)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/29/china-computing


TORONTO — A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers 
and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices 
around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers 
have concluded.

In a report to be issued this weekend, the researchers said that the 
system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in 
China, but that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese 
government was involved.  http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/

The researchers, who are based at the Munk Center for International 
Studies at the University of Toronto, had been asked by the office of the 
Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader whom China regularly denounces, to 
examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware. 

Their sleuthing opened a window into a broader operation that, in less 
than two years, has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 
countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and 
other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile 
centers in India, Brussels, London and New York. 

The researchers, who have a record of detecting computer espionage, said 
they believed that in addition to the spying on the Dalai Lama, the 
system, which they called GhostNet, was focused on the governments of 
South Asian and Southeast Asian countries. 

Intelligence analysts say many governments, including those of China, 
Russia and the United States, and other parties use sophisticated 
computer programs to covertly gather information. 

The newly reported spying operation is by far the largest to come to 
light in terms of countries affected. 

This is also believed to be the first time researchers have been able to 
expose the workings of a computer system used in an intrusion of this 
magnitude. 

Still going strong, the operation continues to invade and monitor more 
than a dozen new computers a week, the researchers said in their 
report, “Tracking ‘GhostNet’: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.”

They said they had found no evidence that United States government 
offices had been infiltrated, although a NATO computer was monitored by 
the spies for half a day and computers of the Indian Embassy in 
Washington were infiltrated.

The malware is remarkable both for its sweep — in computer jargon, it has 
not been merely “phishing” for random consumers’ information, 
but “whaling” for particular important targets — and for its Big Brother-
style capacities. 

It can, for example, 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 investigators say they do not know if this facet has been 
employed. 

The researchers were able to monitor the commands given to infected 
computers and to see the names of documents retrieved by the spies, but 
in most cases the contents of the stolen files have not been determined. 
Working with the Tibetans, however, the researchers found that specific 
correspondence had been stolen and that the intruders had gained control 
of the electronic mail server computers of the Dalai Lama’s organization. 

The electronic spy game has had at least some real-world impact, they 
said. For example, they said, after an e-mail invitation was sent by the 
Dalai Lama’s office to a foreign diplomat, the Chinese government made a 
call to the diplomat discouraging a visit. And a woman working for a 
group making Internet contacts between Tibetan exiles and Chinese 
citizens was stopped by Chinese intelligence officers on her way back to 
Tibet, shown transcripts of her online conversations and warned to stop 
her political activities. 

The Toronto researchers said they had notified international law 
enforcement agencies of the spying operation, which in their view exposed 
basic shortcomings in the legal structure of cyberspace. The F.B.I. 
declined to comment on the operation. 

Although the Canadian researchers said that most of the computers behind 
the spying were in China, they cautioned against concluding that China’s 
government was involved. The spying could be a nonstate, for-profit 
operation, for example, or one run by private citizens in China known 
as “patriotic hackers.” 

“We’re a bit more careful about it, knowing the nuance of what happens in 
the subterranean realms,” said Ronald J. Deibert, a member of the 
research group and an associate professor of political science at 
Munk. “This could well be the C.I.A. or the Russians. It’s a murky realm 
that we’re lifting the lid on.” 

A spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in New York dismissed the idea that 
China was involved. “These are old stories and they are nonsense,” the 
spokesman, Wenqi Gao, said. “The Chinese government is opposed to and 
strictly forbids any cybercrime.” 

The Toronto researchers, who allowed a reporter for The New York Times to 
review the spies’ digital tracks, are publishing their findings in 
Information Warfare Monitor, an online publication associated with the 
Munk Center. 

At the same time, two computer researchers at Cambridge University in 
Britain who worked on the part of the investigation related to the 
Tibetans, are releasing an independent report. They do fault China, and 
they warned that other hackers could adopt the tactics used in the 
malware operation. 

“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,” the Cambridge researchers, Shishir Nagaraja and Ross Anderson, 
wrote in their report, “The Snooping Dragon: Social Malware Surveillance 
of the Tibetan Movement.”

In any case, it was suspicions of Chinese interference that led to the 
discovery of the spy operation. Last summer, the office of the Dalai Lama 
invited two specialists to India to audit computers used by the Dalai 
Lama’s organization. The specialists, Greg Walton, the editor of 
Information Warfare Monitor, and Mr. Nagaraja, a network security expert, 
found that the computers had indeed been infected and that intruders had 
stolen files from personal computers serving several Tibetan exile 
groups. 

Back in Toronto, Mr. Walton shared data with colleagues at the Munk 
Center’s computer lab. 

One of them was Nart Villeneuve, 34, a graduate student and self-
taught “white hat” hacker with dazzling technical skills. 

Last year, Mr. Villeneuve linked the Chinese version of the Skype 
communications service to a Chinese government operation that was 
systematically eavesdropping on users’ instant-messaging sessions. 

Early this month, Mr. Villeneuve noticed an odd string of 22 characters 
embedded in files created by the malicious software and searched for it 
with Google. It led him to a group of computers on Hainan Island, off 
China, and to a Web site that would prove to be critically important. 

In a puzzling security lapse, the Web page that Mr. Villeneuve found was 
not protected by a password, while much of the rest of the system uses 
encryption. 

Mr. Villeneuve and his colleagues figured out how the operation worked by 
commanding it to infect a system in their computer lab in Toronto. 

On March 12, the spies took their own bait. Mr. Villeneuve watched a 
brief series of commands flicker on his computer screen as someone — 
presumably in China — rummaged through the files. Finding nothing of 
interest, the intruder soon disappeared. 

Through trial and error, the researchers learned to use the system’s 
Chinese-language “dashboard” — a control panel reachable with a standard 
Web browser — by which one could manipulate the more than 1,200 computers 
worldwide that had by then been infected. 

Infection happens two ways. In one method, a user’s clicking on a 
document attached to an e-mail message lets the system covertly install 
software deep in the target operating system. Alternatively, a user 
clicks on a Web link in an e-mail message and is taken directly to 
a “poisoned” Web site. 

The researchers said they avoided breaking any laws during three weeks of 
monitoring and extensively experimenting with the system’s unprotected 
software control panel. They provided, among other information, a log of 
compromised computers dating to May 22, 2007. 

They found that three of the four control servers were in different 
provinces in China — Hainan, Guangdong and Sichuan — while the fourth was 
discovered to be at a Web-hosting company based in Southern California. 

Beyond that, said Rafal A. Rohozinski, one of the investigators, 
“attribution is difficult because there is no agreed upon international 
legal framework for being able to pursue investigations down to their 
logical conclusion, which is highly local.” 

--

Cheers,
Stephen



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