Chinese hack into Indian embassies, steal Dalai Lama’s documents

TORONTO - A China-based cyber spy network has hacked into government and private systems in 103 countries, including those of many Indian embassies and the Dalai Lama, an Internet research group said here Saturday.

The Information Warfare Monitor (IWM), which carried out an extensive 10-month research on cyber spy activities emanating from China, said the hacked systems include the computers of Indian embassies and offices of the Dalai Lama.

Without identifying Indian embassies, the group said all evidence points to China as the source of this spy espionage.

The group said it has evidence that the hackers managed to install a software called malware on the compromised computers to steal sensitive documents, including those from the Dalai Lama’s offices.

The group began its research after Tibetan exiles made allegations of cyber spying by the Chinese.

After initial investigations when the group widened it research it found that the China-based cyber espionage had hacked computer systems of embassies of India, Pakistan, Germany, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea and many other countries.

In all, the hackers had gained access to 1,295 computer systems of foreign ministries of many countries, including Bhutan, Bangladesh, Latvia, Indonesia, Iran, and the Philippines, the researchers said.

After gaining access to foreign government and private computer systems, the hackers installed malware to exercise control over these computer systems to access any documents.

‘We have been told by the researchers that the Chinese hackers have gained access to our computers systems all over the world, and taken sensitive documents from the office of His Holiness (the Dalai Lama),’ Toronto-based Tibetan student leader Bhutila Karpoche told IANS.

She said, ‘Our website (studentsforafreetibet.org) has been repeated hacked, and we keep getting all kinds of viruses in our emails. This trend has increased in recent months, and we have become very wary about opening

our emails.’

The findings of the 10-month investigation titled ‘Tracking GhostNet:

Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network,’ will be released Monday.