Researchers in Toronto released a report this weekend, regarding the discovery of a massive cyber-espionage and data theft network that appears to have 3 of it’s 4 Command-and-Control (C&C) located in China.
Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: March 28, 2009TORONTO — A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded.
Details of the exploit vector are exactly spelled out in the article, but it would appear that this software infection of computers capable of monitoring email and other traffic. By description, it sounds like the malware/trojan/crimeware employs a network sniffer to watch traffic I/O on the infected machine, sending interesting data back to one (or more) of the C&C systems. The researchers also indicated that they stumbled upon some of this by accident, and there could be other capabilities of the network not yet exposed.
I plan to look into this further to see what types of systems have been infected.