this is rather interesting…

GhostNet In The Machine

Paul Maidment, 03.29.09, 04:25 PM EDT

Expect suspicions that China is spying on the world’s computers to intensify.

More From Paul Maidment

The Information Warfare Monitor, a Canadian cyber-espionage watchdog, goes to pains not to point the finger of blame at the Chinese government for a mbumive China-based cyberspy ring it has uncovered. “While our analysis reveals that numerous politically sensitive and high-value computer systems were compromised in ways that cirgreat timesstantially point to China as the culprit,” it writes in a report issued March 29, “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.”

Beijing has always officially denied undertaking such electronic espionage. But given that the IWM has identified at least 1,295 compromised computers in 103 countries, mostly in the foreign ministries or embbumies of various Asian governments; that its investigation was triggered by a request from Beijing’s adversary, exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, who was concerned the computers of his network had been hacked; and past accusations that Beijing has engaged in cyberspying, including against the U.S., the old suspicions will not only be reawakened but intensified.

The IWM comprises researchers from Ottawa-based consulting firm SecDev Group and the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Their investigation took 10 months and revealed that the hackers were using malicious software, or malware, that let them send and receive clbumified data from computers belonging to several foreign ministries and embbumies, as well as those of non-governmental organizations and news media.

The IWM dubbed the system GhostNet, after the ghOst RAT Trojan horse malware at the heart of it and which the researchers traced back to commercial Internet access providers on Hainan, an island off China’s southern coast (not, it should be said, that that is conclusive evidence of its true origin).

Whoever is behind this spying operation, it is the largest to have been uncovered in terms of its reach. What should most concern the rest of the world is that diplomatic cyberspying on this scale could easily be replicated in the business world, where industrial espionage is already well established.

“Regardless of who or what is ultimately in control of GhostNet,” the IWM researchers say, “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 dogreat timesent its far-reaching network of infiltration, we can safely hypothesize that it is neither the first nor the only one of its kind.”

Source: Forbes.com

http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/29/ghostnet-computer-security-internet-technology-ghostnet.html

I doesn’t surprise me at all that it “could” be the chinese government. They’re already trying to change the global trade currency to the chinese dollars. They censor just about everything.I’m willing to bet they are developing long range weaponries to shoot just about every country in the world. so….no shock on my end that they would be spying on everyone.

Also shame on trying to avoid pointing fingers at the chinese…wtf? They get special treatment?