Chinese Hackers Break Into Darfur Peace Activists’ Computers

US-based Darfur peace activists, who are initiating efforts for abandoning the 2008 Olympic Games scheduled to be held in China, said that their computer systems encountered cyber attacks from Chinese sources. UKPress published this on March 21, 2008.

Washington-based Save Darfur Coalition said that it has notified the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and is working with members of the agency. This was after a yearly assessment of China's military at the US Department of Defense (DoD) that indicated that China hacked into overseas computer networks.

In a statement that Foxnews published on March 20, 2008, President of the Coalition, Jerry Fowler, said the more closer the Olympics gets, the greater is the scrutiny applied to China's role in obstructing Darfur and its over pushed attempts to divert pressure on the crisis. Fowler said that the attacks on their computer systems clearly bring a message from Beijing.

During the recent attacks, ten members' accounts were compromised in early February 2008 to the second week of March 2008. The intruders even managed to reach the Coalition's Web server and accessed the pages of their Website from inside.

Also, according to Eric Reeves, the owner of a Darfur-related site, his site too came under attack. NYtimes published this on March 20, 2008.

The US DoD also indicated that a number of malicious e-mails along with other Web attack against US-based Tibet advocacy groups are connected to servers from where hacker intrusions triggered in the past. At that time, the US law enforcement traced those intrusions to China.

The Coalition also said that members of Save Darfur discovered the problems when they felt that some third party seemed to be reading their e-mail messages. Further scrutiny revealed other sophisticated strikes, which seemed to source to China. More e-mail arrived from apparently friendly sources but they contained elements capable of harming the technology.

The intruders seemed to focus on monitoring, investigating, and obstructing the coalition's activities. E-mails and Website logs showed IP addresses that belonged to China. And the allegation seemed to match decade-old cyber espionage by the Chinese government against those opposed to China's human rights bodies.

Related article: Chinese Hackers Threatening Korean Game Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 3/29/2008