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Cyber Attacks Target Pro-Tibet Groups •
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China Lashes Out at Crackdown Critics
By Cara Anna
The Associated Press
Sunday 23 March 2008
Chengdu, China - China lashed out Sunday at critics of its crackdown on Tibetan
protesters, describing U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as "habitually bad
tempered" while claiming the Western media serve those who want to smear
the communist country.
The barrage of complaints carried in official media - which included more broadsides
against the Dalai Lama - came as the country sought to present its own version
of the deadly anti-Chinese protests and their aftermath. The crackdown has been
a public relations disaster for China ahead of the Beijing Olympics - a Thailand
torchbearer withdrew Sunday in protest.
With foreign media banned and troops dispatched en masse to quell the most
widespread demonstrations against Chinese rule in nearly five decades, independent
information barely trickled out of the Tibetan capital Lhasa and other far-flung
communities.
The People's Daily, the main mouthpiece of the Communist Party, placed the
blame for the recent riots on Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Nobel Peace
Prize-winning Dalai Lama.
"The Dalai clique is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to
force the Chinese government to make concessions to Tibet independence,"
it said.
The attacks on the Dalai Lama - who advocates nonviolence and denies being
behind the March 14 riots in Lhasa - have been aimed at further demonizing him
in the eyes of the Chinese public, which strongly supports the Olympics.
The official Xinhua New Agency, meanwhile, published a commentary bashing Pelosi,
a fierce critic of China who on Friday visited the Dalai Lama at his headquarters
in India, where she called China's crackdown "a challenge to the conscience
of the world."
Xinhua accused Pelosi of ignoring the violence caused by the Tibetan rioters.
"'Human rights police' like Pelosi are habitually bad tempered and ungenerous
when it comes to China, refusing to check their facts and find out the truth
of the case," it said.
"Her views are like so many other politicians and western media. Beneath
the double standards lies their intention to serve the interest groups behind
them, who want to contain or smear China."
Reports of how many people died in the violence have varied and been impossible
to independently verify. China raised its death toll to 22, with Xinhua reporting
Saturday that the charred remains of an 8-month-old boy and four adults were
pulled from a garage burned down in Lhasa last Sunday - two days after the city
erupted in anti-Chinese rioting. The Dalai Lama's exiled government says 99
Tibetans have been killed, 80 in Lhasa, 19 in Gansu province.
The Chinese government has sought to portray itself and Chinese businesses
as the victims.
Xinhua said Sunday that 94 people had been injured in four counties and one
city in Gansu province in riots on March 15-16. It said that 64 police, 27 armed
police, two government officials and one civilian were hurt. It made no mention
of any injuries to the protesters.
China has been hoping to use the August Olympics to bolster its international
image.
There have been discussions of a possible international boycott of the Games,
though the European Union and the United States have so far said they opposed
the idea.
The official lighting of the Olympic flame is set for Monday in Greece, and
some 1,000 police will surround Ancient Olympia to keep away pro-Tibetan protesters
from the ceremony. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge is
scheduled to attend.
Some fear the arrival of the Olympic torch - scheduled to travel through 20
countries before the Beijing Olympics open on Aug. 8 - could spark violent protests
against China.
The torch relay is already becoming politicized.
Narisa Chakrabongse- an environmentalist and one of Thailand's six torchbearers
- said in an open letter that she decided against taking part in the relay to
"send a strong message to China that the world community could not accept
its actions." Narisa wrote, "The slaying of the Tibetans ... is an
outright violation of human rights."
Despite media restrictions, some information was leaking out on troop movements.
One American backpacker who traveled to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province,
said he had seen soldiers or paramilitary troops in Deqen in northwest Yunnan
province, which borders Tibet.
"What was an empty parking lot by the library was full of military trucks
and people practicing with shields. I saw hundreds of soldiers," said the
witness, who would give only his first name Ralpha.
There have been no reported protests in Yunnan.
Xinhua issued several reports Sunday saying that in addition to Gansu province,
life was returning to normal in other areas where protests took place in the
wake of the Lhasa riots.
It said "more than half of the shops on major streets were seen reopened
for business" in Aba, the center of northern Aba county in Sichuan province.
It quoted county Communist Party chief Kang Qingwei as saying government departments
and major enterprises were "running normally" and that schools would
reopen on Monday.
Aba is where Xinhua has said police shot and wounded four rioters in self-defense.
It was the first time the government acknowledged shooting any protesters.
In Lhasa Saturday, Champa Phuntsok, Tibet's China-appointed governor, vowed
that local authorities will make a concerted effort to maintain stability, Xinhua
reported Sunday.
"We must...win the final victory in all respects against the secessionist
forces to help ensure successful Olympic Games with a stable social situation
in the Tibet Autonomous Region," he said.
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Cyber Attacks Target Pro-Tibet Groups
By Brian Krebs
The Washington Post
Friday 21 March 2008
Human rights and pro-democracy groups sympathetic to anti-China demonstrators
in Tibet are being targeted by sophisticated cyber attacks designed to disrupt
their work and steal information on their members and activities.
Alison Reynolds, director of the Tibet Support Network, said organizations
affiliated with her group are receiving on average 20 e-mail virus attacks daily.
Increasingly, she said, the contents of the messages suggest that someone on
one or more of the member groups' mailing lists has an e-mail account or computer
that has already been compromised.
On March 18, as protests in Tibet intensified, a technology specialist working
with Reynolds's group sent a message to members warning them to expect a sharp
increase in e-mail and other cyber attacks against groups rallying the international
community against China's crackdown. Less than 24 hours later, Reynolds said,
someone sent the exact same message out to the list, urging recipients to review
an attached Microsoft Word document for online safety instructions (file-named
"cyberattack.doc"). The attachment included a Trojan horse program
that opened a "backdoor" on any computer used to open the file, giving
the senders remote access over the system.
"If successful, these attacks can impact the safety of the people we work
with, but the other part of this is it seems they're trying to make it more
difficult for us to function effectively, to disrupt our activities," Reynolds
said.
Sharon Hom, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights in China,
said the group's 25 member organizations worldwide have reported a marked upswing
in the number and sophistication of e-mail virus attacks. In 2006, the group
intercepted just two targeted e-mail attacks, and by the end of last year that
number had grown to 40. In the first three months of 2008, the group's members
have received more than 100 such targeted attacks.
Experts say attributing such attacks to any one group or government is extremely
difficult, as computer systems that appear to be the source of malicious activity
online often are controlled by persons or groups using computers in completely
different locations. But Reynolds said these types of sustained, targeted attacks
suggest a level of organization, tenacity and degree of commitment not typically
seen in attacks by individual hackers.
"They're really trying to disrupt the Tibetan movement, and whoever is
perpetrating this is doing it on full-time basis," she said.
A handful of recent targeted attacks shared the same Internet resources and
tactics in common with those used in a spate of digital assaults against number
of major U.S. defense contractors, said Maarten Van Horenbeeck, an incident
handler with the SANS Internet Storm Center, Bethesda, Md.-based organization
that tracks online security trends.
According to a January article in Air Force Online, a series of e-mail attacks
originating in China targeted 28 defense contractor locations in the United
States late last year. The story named specific Beijing-based Internet addresses
that the FBI later determined were the origin of the attacks.
Van Horenbeeck, who provides security and technical advice to several Tibetan
groups, said he has uncovered evidence that those same numeric Internet addresses
were used in targeted attacks against Students For a Free Tibet, another New
York-based human rights group.
The attacks on pro-Tibet organizations are not the first to be tied to computers
in China. The Washington Post reported March 21 that the FBI is investigating
whether hackers in China targeted a group working for human rights in Darfur,
the war-torn province of Sudan. China has economic and strategic interests in
the African nation's oil fields.
Van Horenbeeck said the danger with the e-mail viruses involved in the attacks
is that they are so hand-crafted and new that they usually go undetected by
dozens of commercial anti-virus scanners on the market today.
"Last week, I had two of these samples that were detected by two out of
32 different anti-virus scanners, and another that was completely undetected,"
he said.
The specificity of information sought in the targeted attacks also suggests
the attackers are searching for intelligence that might be useful or valuable
to a group that wants to keep tabs on human rights groups, said Nathan Dorjee,
a graduate student who provides technology support to Students for a Free Tibet.
Dorjee said one recent e-mail attack targeted at the group's members included
a virus designed to search victim's computers for encryption keys used to mask
online communications. The attackers in this case were searching for PGP keys,
a specific technology that group members routinely use to prevent outsiders
or eavesdroppers from reading any intercepted messages.
Dorjee said the attacks have been unsettling but ineffective, as the Students
for a Free Tibet network mostly operates on more secure platforms, such as Apple
computers and machines powered by open source operating systems.
"The fact that we're being attacked with the same resources thrown at
multi-billion defense contractors is flattering," said Lhadon Tethong,
executive director of Students for a Free Tibet. "It shows that we really
are an effective thorn in the side of a repressive regime."
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