Chinese espionage?

China seems to be all over the news lately, and over the past few weeks I have written several posts about current events relating to the PRC. Today I am going to add one more, because the story in question is particularly interesting. This morning researchers in the University of Toronto discovered an electronic spying network called GhostNet, which had “infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries.” The network appeared to be based in China, and most of the nations infiltrated are located in East Asia. The spy network targeted politicians and companies these nations. Here is an incomplete list of some of the notable nations who were hacked: Iran, Bangladesh, Latvia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Barbados, Bhutan, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Romania, Cyprus, Malta, Thailand, Taiwan, Portugal, Germany and Pakistan. There was also evidence that one of GhostNet’s targets was the Dali Lama, since various private documents of his were found on the network.

The key question we must ask is this: was the Chinese government involved? Though the PRC has denied involvement and the Canadian researchers have stated that there is no conclusive evidence that the government had a hand in it, they do seem to be a very likely culprit. The fact that most of the nations on the list are East Asian is notable, since it hints at the motives of the hackers—at the very least, it proves that their objective is related to the nations surrounding China. Additionally, the fact that China was not on the list is also important—it shows that the hackers are not directly anti-Chinese. The most pressing piece of evidence is the fact that the Dali Lama was spied on extensively. The Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibet, a province of China that has always craved independence. It would make perfect sense for the Chinese government to want to spy on the Dali Lama or enlist someone else to do it for them.

Of course, this evidence does not prove that the PRC was behind GhostNet. There are many other possibilities—for example, Islamist terrorist groups may have wanted the information to plan future attacks, or the information may have been collected to be sold to organized crime groups. But one thing is clear: we must get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible. Though international relations with China may turn very sour if the PRC was related to GhostNet, we cannot push a scandal of this magnitude under the rug.

But even if GhostNet was not related to the Chinese government, it reminds us of the dangers of our computer-based society. The fact that a relatively small group of people was able to infiltrate over 103 countries is a reflection on how secure government secrets really are. It also begs the question, how many groups are there that we haven’t caught yet? The answer may be far worse than we think. Also, GhostNet reminds us that “cyber-terrorism” is still alive and well. Again, our infrastructure and government are probably nowhere near as secure as we would like to think.  We can only hope that the GhostNet incident will prompt governments to step up efforts to catch electronic spy rings before they become real threats to national security.