[Politech] Beijing spars with Dalai Lama via email trojans [fs]

From: Declan McCullagh (declan@private)
Date: Fri Mar 11 2005 - 18:06:24 PST


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Beijing vs. the Dalai Lama via email trojans
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 06:12:47 -0800
From: Xeni Jardin <xeni@private>
To: 'Declan McCullagh' <declan@private>

Report: Beijing Trojan Horse disguised as Dalai Lama statement

A statement from the Office of Tibet says:

---------------------------
Trojan Horse Gallops from Beijing, Disguised as Dalai Lama Statement

Office of Tibet, New York[Tuesday, March 08, 2005 10:08]

NEW YORK, March 7 - As the Tibetan people wait for His Holiness the Dalai
Lama's national address of 10 March, hackers in Beijing are working overtime
to sabotage the cyber world of Tibet movement.

Offices of the Tibetan exile administration have recently started receiving
emails disguised as originating from Sonam N. Dagpo, "Additional Secretary"
(sic) of the Department of Information and International Relations (DIIR) in
Dharamsala, and purportedly carrying the text of His Holiness the Dalai
Lama's 10 March statement as an attached file.

Promptly denying authorship of the insidious emails, Dagpo, Secretary (no
longer additional secretary), warned us that the attachment was actually a
virus.

Dagpo warned us also not to open any attachment purportedly coming from the
official email addresses of other DIIR staffers, such as Tenzin Lekshey and
Masood Butt.

Once opened, the attachment is designed to plant a Trojan Horse on the
unsuspecting recipient's computer, making its content accessible to the
attackers.

The source of the eavesdropping devise was traced by Washington, D.C.-based
International Campaign for Tibet to China Railway Telecommunications Center
in Xicheng District, Beijing.

This makes it the third round of cyber attacks coming from Beijing and
targetting the Tibet movement.

The last attack came in the Fall of 2003 to coincide with the Fourth
International Tibet Support Groups Conference in Prague, when an Internet
company in Beijing sent out a custom-designed eavesdropper disguised as a
message from the conference organizer, Tibetan exile administration offices
and major support groups round the world.

Chinese hackers are known to have planted digital spies also on the computer
systems of other governments and movements deemed to be hostile.

Victims include Falung Gong, and the governments of South Korea, Taiwan and
the United States.

As late as July 2004, nearly 300 South Korean government computers were
reportedly infected by "viruses capable of stealing passwords and other
sensitive information".

Financial Times reported that the "National Assembly and an atomic energy
research institute are among 10 agencies penetrated by the hackers, who were
traced to China by the Korean intelligence service."


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Link: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/11/report_beijing_troja.html

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