Tibet exiles struggle to thwart Chinese hackers

CYBER WARS

The report, by the Information Warfare Monitor group, was commissioned by staff working for Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama after they became alarmed by possible breaches of security. The 10-month investigation by specialists at the University of Toronto found the spying was being done from computers based almost exclusively in China.

Cybercrime complaints up 33 pct in 2008: FBI
The number of complaints about Internet crime soared by 33 percent last year over the previous year with total dollar losses rising nearly 11 percent, the FBI reported on Monday. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National White Collar Crime Center, said 275,284 complaints of Internet crime were received in 2008, up from 206,884 in 2007. Total dollar losses reported rose by 10.8 percent in 2008 to 265 million dollars from 239 million dollars in 2007, it said in its annual report. It said the average individual loss from Web crime last year was 931 dollars. "This report illustrates that sophisticated computer fraud schemes continue to flourish as financial data migrates to the Internet," FBI Cyber Division assistant director Shawn Henry said in a statement. "It also underscores the need for continued vigilance on the part of law enforcement, businesses, and the home computer user to be aware of these schemes and employ sound security procedures." The complaints received by the IC3 ranged from auction fraud to credit or debit card fraud to computer intrusions to spam or unsolicited e-mail to child pornography. The report said 72,940 complaints were referred to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies around the country for further consideration. It said the most common complaints concerned non-delivery of merchandise and/or payment, comprising 32.9 percent of referred complaints. Internet auction fraud accounted for 25.5 percent of referred complaints while credit or debit card fraud made up nine percent. The report also found that men tended to lose more money to Internet fraud than women -- with males losing 1.69 dollars to one dollar lost per female. "This may be a function of both online purchasing differences by gender and the type of fraudulent schemes by which the individuals were victimized," the report said.

by Staff Writers
Dharamshala, India (AFP) March 30, 2009
Tibet's exiled government said Monday it was trying to boost computer security systems after a report concluded they were being targeted by a China-based espionage network.

Canadian researchers found that the network, known as GhostNet, had infiltrated government and private computers around the world, with Tibetan exiles based in the Indian hill town of Dharamshala -- including the Dalai Lama -- one of its prime targets.

"We had have computers hit by viruses and information going missing," said Thubten Samphel, spokesman for the Tibetan government in exile.

"How this knowledge is used is of great concern, so we are trying to improve the security of our system, but we have limited resources.

"We are transparent in our work and it is not ethical behaviour to retrieve this data."

The report, by the Information Warfare Monitor group, was commissioned by staff working for Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama after they became alarmed by possible breaches of security.

The 10-month investigation by specialists at the University of Toronto found the spying was being done from computers based almost exclusively in China.

But researchers said there was no conclusive evidence that the Chinese government was involved.

The Tibetan exile community gave researchers access to their computers in London, Brussels and New York, as well as in Dharamshala.

"The Tibetan computer systems we manually investigated... were conclusively compromised by multiple infections that gave attackers unprecedented access to potentially sensitive information," the report said.

In London, Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Weimin suggested the investigation was part of a Tibetan media and propaganda campaign.

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CYBER WARS

Vexing computer worm to evolve on April Fool's Day

San Francisco (AFP) March 29, 2009
A tenacious computer worm which has wriggled its way onto machines worldwide is set to evolve on April Fool's Day, becoming harder to exterminate but not expected to wreak havoc.

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