SECURITY THREAT - Indian secrets fall prey to Chinese hackers .........

Friends,
I read this news in Livemint internet edition and was shocked to read it...I have pasted it here the whole text.....I donno what our Government is upto.....We already heard the news that China is already taking our land inch by inch in Kashmir and there is big furore over it in Media..China is also constructing Dam at Bhramputra river in East which is still a dispute.....Chinese import in India has been more then India's export and that is making imbalance in trade between China and India as China is becoming trade surplus in C/A with India....just like China has trade surplus with USA which is HUGE and that is where USA is anxious of.
But hacking securities papers and information is a very big concern and Government should take care of it...Why a neighbour should spy for securities information ?The clues are not far to understand....I donno when India will waken up about all these?What steps India took for the Chinese invasion and eating the land up inch by inch......Government needs to comeout with white paper what is happening at Kashmir border, Eastern boader and also in hacking of securities information....it is a very easy to assume what China would like to do with these information....
This is a SERIOUS MATTER......India.....u need to wakeup....

It should not happen that we strike late and then repent as we did in Kargil and paid heavy price for that losing brave soldiers in that battle with Pakistan.

Rajeev

SECURITY THREAT - Indian secrets fall prey to Chinese hackers

B Y J OHN M ARKOFF & D AVID B ARBOZA ························· TORONTO/SHANGHAI


Turning the tables on a China-based computer espionage gang, Canadian and US computer security re- searchers have monitored a spying operation for the past eight months, observing while the intruders pilfered classified and restricted documents from the highest levels of the Indian defence ministry.

In a report issued Monday night, the researchers, based at the Munk School of Global Af- fairs at the University of Toron- to, provide a detailed account of how a spy operation it called the Shadow Network systematically hacked into personal computers in government offices on sever- al continents.
The Toronto spy hunters not only learnt what kinds of mate- rial had been stolen, but were able to see some of the actual documents, including classified assessments about security in several Indian states, and confi- dential embassy documents about India's relationships in West Africa, Russia and West Asia. The intruders breached the systems of independent an- alysts, taking reports on several Indian missile systems. They also obtained a year's worth of the Dalai Lama's personal email messages.
The intruders even stole doc- uments related to the travel of Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Or- ganization) forces in Afghan- istan, illustrating that even though the Indian government was the primary target of the at- tacks, one chink in computer security can leave many nations exposed.
“It's not only that you're only secure as the weakest link in your network,“ said Rafal Ro- hozinski, a member of the To- ronto team. “But in an intercon- nected world, you're only as se- cure as the weakest link in the global chain of information.“
The spy operation appears to be different both from the Inter- net intruders identified by Google and from a surveillance ring known as Ghostnet, also believed to be operating from China, which the Canadian re- searchers identified in March of last year. Ghostnet used com- puter servers largely based on the island of Hainan to steal documents from the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet, and government and corpora- tions in at least 103 countries.
The Ghostnet investigation led the investigators to this sec- ond Internet spy operation, which is the subject of their new report, titled Shadows in the Cloud: An investigation into cy- ber-espionage 2.0. The new re- port shows the India-focused spy ring made extensive use of social networks such as Twitter, Google Groups, Blogspot, Baidu Blogs and Yahoo Mail, to auto- mate the control of computers once they had been infected.
The Canadian researchers co- operated in their investigation with a volunteer US group of se- curity experts at the Shad- owserver Foundation, which fo- cuses on Internet criminal ac- tivity. The researchers said the sec- ond spy ring was more sophisti- cated and difficult to detect than the Ghostnet operation.
By examining a series of email addresses, the investiga- tors traced the attacks to hack- ers who appeared to be based in Chengdu, which is home to a large population from neigh- bouring Tibet. Researchers be- lieve one hacker used the code name lost33 and that he may have been affiliated with the city's prestigious University of Electronic Science and Tech- nology. The university publish- es books on computer hacking and offers courses in “network attack and defence technology“ and “information conflict tech- nology“, according to its web- site.
The People's Liberation Army also operates a technical reconnaissance bureau in the city and helps fund the university's re- search on computer network defence. A spokesman for the university could not be reached Monday because of a national holiday.
The investigators linked the account of another hacker to a Chengdu resident whose name appeared to be Li. Reached by telephone on Monday, Li de- nied taking part in computer hacking. Li, who declined to give his full name, said he must be confused with someone else.
He said he knew little about computer hacking. “That is not me,“ he said. “I'm a wine sell- er.“
The Canadian researchers stressed that while the new spy ring focused primarily on India, there were clear international ramifications. Rohozinski noted that civilian personnel working for Nato and the reconstruction mission in Afghanistan usually travel through India and that Indian government visa issuing com- puters were compromised in both Kandahar and Kabul in Af- ghanistan.
“That is an operations securi- ty issue for both Nato and the International Security Assis- tance Force,“ said Rohozinski, who is also chief executive of the SecDev group, a Canadian computer security consulting and research firm.
The report notes that docu- ments the researchers recover- ed were found with “Secret“, “Restricted“, and “Confidential“ notices. “These documents,“ the report says, “contain sensi- tive information taken from a member of the (Indian) National Security Council Secretariat concerning secret assessments of India's security situation in the states of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura, as well as concerning the Naxalites and the Maoists.“
Other documents contained personal information about a member of India's military in- telligence agency.
The researchers also found evidence that Indian embassy computers in Kabul, Moscow, Dubai and the high commission of India in Abuja, Nigeria, were compromised.
Also compromised were com- puters used by the Indian Mili- tary Engineer Services in Bengdubi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Jalandhar; the 21st Moun- tain Artillery Brigade in Assam; and three air force bases. Com- puters at two Indian military colleges were also taken over by the spy ring.
Even after eight months of watching the spy ring, the To- ronto researchers said they could not determine exactly who was using the Chengdu computers to infiltrate the Indi- an government.
“But an important question to be entertained is whether the PRC (People's Republic of Chi- na) will take action to shut the Shadow network down,“ the re- port says. “Doing so will help to address long-standing concerns that malware ecosystems are actively cultivated, or at the very least tolerated, by governments like the PRC who stand to bene- fit from their exploits though the black and grey markets for information and data.“