Tibetan Activists | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Tibet is an area in the Republic of China that has been the point of conflict for many years in China. While China believes that Tibet has been under Chinese rule for many centuries, Tibetans claim that they declared itself an independent republic in 1912. Tibetan Groups, especially pro-democracy activists, are being repeatedly targeted by persistent Cyber Attacks by Chinese State-sponsored hackers. Our Sources in Tibetan Community told The Hacker News that they are once again being targeted by Chinese hackers; this time their social network website. Chinese hackers are believed to have targeted a Tibetan only social networking site, unitib.com ( United Tibet ) as Beijing views the platform as a threat promoting free Tibet movement. The Unitib technical team sought assistance from Taiwanese and Indian security experts after they were forced to take the platform offline for few days due to the attack. Tashi, a member of the technical team at Unitib told The Hac

An old vulnerability in Word for OS X is being used in increasing levels of attacks,  probably government-sponsored hacking programs  against Uyghur group, including Tibetans, NGOs and human rights organizations. A number of attacks have been seen directed at the World Uyghur Congress, a Munich-based organization that promotes human rights. Potential victims are often tricked by so-called spear phishing attacks, the targets receive an e-mail with a subject relevant to their interests, and a Word document attached.  When they open the document, TinySHell exploits a vulnerability and then infects the computer. Exploit allows long-term monitoring or even control of the compromised system though a backdoor it installs. The malware is configured to connect to command and control servers that have been used for years in APT attacks. All the attacks use exploits for the CVE-2009-0563 (Microsoft Office) vulnerability and The backdoor also includes hard-coded functionality to

Researchers over at Intego have recently discovered a new variant of  OSX/Imuler the data-stealing Mac malware, detected as OSX/Imuler.E which is believed to be targeting Tibetan rights activists. " This backdoor Trojan family was first discovered in September 2011 as a Mac PDF Trojan horse and has been targeting activist organizations with emails containing what appear to be pictures. Each variant has tried different tactics, either trying to scare or entice their target into opening the file. " explained . The cyber criminals behind the campaign are relying on the fact that by default, Mac OS X doesn't display full file extensions, and therefore are attempting to trick end and corporate users into thinking that they're about the view a JPG image file. The Imuler Trojan has two main methods of stealing information, It searches the system for user data OR It can also take screenshots. Then, This data is then uploaded to the controller's server. Last week, Thousand