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Who was behind GhostNet? #SecTor From the "People's Republic' files:
TORONTO. Who was behind the massive GhostNet botnet that comprised nearly 1,300 government computers around the world? The short answer is : we still don't know. That's the word from researcher Nart Villeneuve who gave a talk about his GhostNet experiences at the SecTor security conference. I wrote about GhostNet back in March, when Villeneuve and his crew at the University of Toronto first reported the diplomatically targeted botnet. Back then, the blame was cast on the government of the People's Republic of China, which is a claim the Chinese government vehemently denied. So seven months later, who does Villeneuve thing the culprits really are? "We don't know for sure who was behind the attacks, Villeneuve told the capacity audience. "It could be the Chinese government, but it just as easily could have been random." Villeneuve said that perhaps one diplomat was infected, then because that diplomat knew other diplomats the infection just spread. The other option is that the whole thing was a conspiracy to frame China, as nearly all the command and control servers were located in China. Though Villeneuve wasn't sure about who was behind GhostNet, he does suspect that other similiar botnets are out there, waiting to be discovered. As for GhostNet itself, Villeneuve said that within a few hours of his report on the botnet being made public and published by the New York Times, the botnets command and control servers were shut off. In my view, this is about as good as it gets in the cloak and dagger world of international cyber espionage. Personally I think the network was too well organized to be anything other than a well-funded group, government or otherwise. Let's just hope that Villeneuve and other 'good people' like him remain vigilant and detect other such efforts before too much damage is done. 0 TrackBacksListed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Who was behind GhostNet? #SecTor. TrackBack URL for this entry: https://swarm.jupitermedia.com/mt-tb.cgi/9042 1 CommentsLeave a comment |
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I do agree with you that whoever was behind Ghostnet is still hard to pinpoint; to say whoever that they're "too well organized" is a little misleading: the investigation exposed numerous amateurish mistakes in the way the botnet was run (exposed management interfaces with no authentication). No professional group would go about running their botnet this way (unless it was purposely done to make it look run by an amateur group.... at the cost of being exposed though?).