Russian & Chinese Hackers Blamed for Infiltrating Campaign E-mails

According to the news published by Independent on November 8, 2008, sophisticated hackers broke into the computers of John McCain and Barack Obama while the US presidential campaign was going on and stole a vast number of files. The theft appears to be a part of an intelligence-gathering maneuver by China or Russia.

Initially, it was thought that the Obama attack was related to a malware downloaded from a spoofed or phishing Website. But further probing revealed that it was a PC virus that allowed illegal downloading of e-mails as well as other confidential content from the candidates' campaign sites.

Besides, in summer, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret Service warned both Mr. McCain's and Mr. Obama's campaigning teams about a foreign entity believed to have compromised the computer networks of both contenders. Meanwhile, describing the entity, Washington insiders said it was a code for China.

Meanwhile, the discovery of the attacks is credited to the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force. It was found that the attacks had not hacked into classified links pointing to White House files rather they concentrated on unclassified regions.

FBI had assured Mr. Obama that the cyber attack was not from any of his political opponent. According to the US officials, the attacks originated in China but they still do not know whether these got the support of the government or an independent source.

Nevertheless, the officials believe that the attack was initiated by either the Chinese government or an unspecified agency to know more about the different candidates' standing on issues like the One-China Policy i.e. their policy towards Taiwan and other matters of significance to the Chinese. Thus, the attack could be implicitly useful for China in future settlements with a fresh presidential administration.

Security specialists also said that the Chinese army had set up units to create viruses to target enemy computer networks, although China argues that it is a victim in equal proportion as the perpetrator's in the current conflict.

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» SPAMfighter News - 11/23/2008