Pro-Tibet groups under virus attack
p2pnet news | Freedom:- Organizations affiliated with the Tibet Support Network are being attacked by email viruses, says Alison Reynolds, the group’s director.
Up to 20 such attacks are occurring daily, the Washington Post has her saying, also stating the contents of the messages suggest someone on one or more of the member groups’ mailing lists has a compromised email account.
“On March 18, as protests in Tibet intensified, a technology specialist working with Reynolds’s group sent a message to members warning them to expect a sharp increase in e-mail and other cyber attacks against groups rallying the international community against China’s crackdown,” says the story, going on:
“Less than 24 hours later, Reynolds said, someone sent the exact same message out to the list, urging recipients to review an attached Microsoft Word document for online safety instructions (file-named ‘cyberattack.doc’). The attachment included a Trojan horse program that opened a ‘backdoor’ on any computer used to open the file, giving the senders remote access over the system.
The Washington Post also quotes Human Rights in China executive director Sharon Hom as saying its 25 member organizations have reported a, “marked upswing in the number and sophistication of e-mail virus attacks”.
In 2006, “the group intercepted just two targeted e-mail attacks, and by the end of last year that number had grown to 40,” says the story, but, “In the first three months of 2008, the group’s members have received more than 100 such targeted attacks.”
Attributing such attacks to any one group or government is extremely difficult because computer systems which seem to be the source of malicious activity online, ” too often are controlled by persons or groups using computers in completely different locations,” says the story, which has Reynolds noting these types of sustained, targeted attacks, “suggest a level of organization, tenacity and degree of commitment not typically seen in attacks by individual hackers”.
“They’re really trying to disrupt the Tibetan movement, and whoever is perpetrating this is doing it on full-time basis,” she said.
Also See:
Washington Post – Cyber Attacks Target Pro-Tibet Groups, March 21, 2008
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March 25th, 2008 at 12:56 am
“You just can’t trust the Chinese.” – a quote from a Robot Chicken episode.
March 25th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
hey stfu don’t even try to pin this on chinese people as a race, you should know better than that being a reader of this blog in the first place