Spyware Removal

Cyber security researchers and analysts have uncovered the existence of a spy network based in China that was used to steal sensitive, classified government documents from India – as well data from the Dalai Lama’s office and the United Nations.

The “Shadow Network”, as this network is now known, has been traced to two people living in Chengdu, China. China is largely believed to possess a Cyber Warfare Doctrine that is designed to achieve global “electronic dominance” by 2050.

With a yearly budget of $55 million allotted for it and over 10,000 hackers working in tandem, China is second only to U.S. when it comes to cyber snooping prowess.

As more details emerge about the intentions of these hackers, it is clear that they had targeted the upcoming Commonwealth games in India. The idea was to make Commonwealth games an utter failure later this year. The plans included studying the network architecture. This includes ticket sales, online registration servers all of which would crash at the time of the inaugural ceremony.

The hackers had also looked into tender documents for the Commonwealth games network infrastructure. Intelligence agencies feel this could be for studying vulnerabilities in the system for possible attacks. In 2008 and 2009 too, there were many incidences of small attacks on computers of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.

As many as 450 computers belonging to the India Government – including that of the then National Security Adviser (NSA) M.K. Narayanan and Deputy NSA Shekhar Dutt and the chiefs of the navy, army and air force besides officials in the defense intelligence agencies were infected. The infected computers were taken offline and replaced.

This week the FTC took action over consumer retail giants Kmart and Sears which are both owned by the same firm after they failed to reveal the scope their tracking software’s data collection.

The tracking software was first available at sears.com. Named as “My SHC Community”, this software would get downloaded and installed on the user’s PC as “research software” in exchange for $10. The program collects user details and data related to the user’s surfing habits. Additionally, the software also collected non-web related information about the computer itself.

It is alleged that the software also collected sensitive information such as bank records. All the activities of the software are mentioned in a 54-page long license agreement. However, the agreement violates FTC rules which mandate “unavoidable” disclosure “prior to…and separate from” other licensing agreements.

As a part of the settlement, Sears will destroy all the data that was collected using the software and provide help to the users in uninstalling the software.

Some e-mails circulating on the Internet appearing to be from the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence division are fake and contain malware. Caution should be exercised while opening such emails.

The e-mails have their origin from IP addresses located in Russia and Latvia. The Homeland Security Department’s counter-intelligence division has released a three-page alert about these fake emails.

These emails were sent to various officials belonging to the Defense Department and other bodies. The emails contain spyware designed to steal personal information from the officials. Counter-intelligence officials do not fully know the exact motives behind the creators of these emails.

The emails contain links that point to spyware that steals banking passwords.

SOURCE: The Associated Press.