Africa suspected of hacking by the Swiss secret services « Competitive Intelligence in Central Africa

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A report commissioned by a US Congressional advisory panel monitoring the security implications of trading with China has warned that China has started spying on the US government and major companies.

And, says Finjan, the business Internet security specialist, now is the time for companies to start beefing up their IT security defences to stop them falling victim to what appears to be a rash of impending cyber-espionage from the Far East.

” Many cyber attacks and hacker incursions originated from China have been implicated in into Western IT systems in recent years. Obviously it’s hard to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the government there is involved in these attacks, however according to the report it’s quite likely that government is active in this domain,” said Yuval-Ben Itzhak, Finjan’s chief technology officer.

“It’s against this backdrop that we’ve been conducting investigations into Chinese attacks on Western public and private-sector IT systems for some time,” he added.

According to the Finjan CTO, his company’s malicious code research centre (MCRC) conducted in in-depth study into the rising volume of attacks emanating from China and reported that there were some very sophisticated attacks taking place.

In the study, he explained, Finjan’s research team found at least one set of attacks coming from a server group that belongs to a Chinese government office.

Researchers, he said, discovered that some sites in the network lead to Trojan sites that exploit the users’ Web browser software by downloading the Trojan and installing it on the user desktop.

Once the users’ PC has been infected, he went on to say, the Trojan then starts to send data to other Web sites on the Internet-connected network.

Additional sites in the network, meanwhile, were found to monitor and control the attack using statistics as to how many users visit the site and how many got infected.

“And that was two years ago, so you can imagine that the Chinese hacker attack groups – regardless of who they are affiliated to – have increased in their level of technology sophistication, so this report serves as a clear warning to companies of the need to review and enhance their IT security defences,” he said.

“Tools and products to fights against the increasing cybercrime from China are available for US Businesses and individuals. The reason many businesses are becoming victims to these attacks is the lack of knowledge and the false believe that their existing Firewalls and Anti-virus can do the job for them. Although that was the case 10-5 years ago, since cyber criminals introduced new attack techniques Firewall and Anti-virus are not enough to stop today’s cyber attacks.”

Finjan

Africa suspected of hacking by the Swiss secret services

In Electronic espionage, Information warfare, Security on May 23, 2008 by Admin. Tagged: Electronic espionage, Infowar, Security

Hackers exploited a false contest of photographs and trapped websites to get informations from ministerial employees. Several computers used by civils servant of Swiss federal Department of the foreign affairs and Secretariat of State to economy have being replaced, following a rather interesting computer attack.

Radio DRS indicated that hackers had tried to be introduced into the small secrecies of the ministry last November. Chinese ? Even not, at least it is what the IP (Internet Protocol) raised by the Swiss secret services reveals. The machine used in the attack was African. The pirate sent an email, praising the existence of a photographic contest. Mission: to incite the readers to click on the link. The address returned on a trapped website which had the role of installing spy software in the machine of the visitor. Marc Henauer of the federal Office of police force (fedpol) indicated the “professionalism of the attackers”.

That information questions the relevance of the geolocalisation of IP as paramount clue to determine the origin of a hack attack. These last months, this clue pushed several european governments to indicate China as Pirate-State whereas a hacker that has nationality B can move in a country C and attack a target in a State D. Sometimes without masking “his IP”. Just as if a profesionnal killer voluntarily left his digital fingerprints on the place of the crime (!)

In Africa where Net surfers have access to collective computers, nothing prevents a foreign hacker to attack a target located outside of Africa. The topic is sensitive in certain intelligence agencies where one fears to reveal deficiencies vis-a-vis this type of criminality and/or to feed the already fertile imagination of the black hats.

However, it would be so easy and even irresponsible to reject our super clue wholesale, at least in the absence of independent and detailed investigations…

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Africa suspected of hacking by the Swiss secret services

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