China Hackers Launch Cyber Attack On India, Dalai Lama

The report, authored by Canadian and American researchers out of the University of Toronto, found that the attack was linked to an underground cyberespionage organization in the south of China, which might have funneled information to certain channels in the Chinese government.

The stolen documents that were recovered contained sensitive information from India's National Security Council Secretariat, as well as classified documents detailing the security situation in bordering nations Tibet, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The report, titled "Shadows in the Clouds," indicated that Chinese cyberattackers capitalized on social networks such as Twitter, Google Groups and Yahoo Mail to propel a botnet designed to infiltrate and infect Indian computers with malware and connect them into Chinese command and control centers.

Among the compromised systems subject to a massive data breach is the Shakti, the Indian Army's artillery combat and control system, as well as India's mobile missile defense system known as Iron Dome, according to Indianexpress.com.

The eight-month investigation -- which researchers said is ongoing -- found that the Dalai Lama's office was targeted in the attacks between January and November 2009.

A year ago, the same University of Toronto researchers authored another report describing a cyberattack on the Tibetan government, called "GhostNet," which was used to create a botnet that had infected 1,295 computers in 103 countries. Similarly, that investigation was launched at the behest of the Dalai Lama.

China denied involvement in the attacks, and the country's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told the BBC that the country was "firmly opposed to hacking." She added that the researchers had not contacted the Chinese government, although they claimed to have contacted China's Computer Emergency Response Team.

The cyberattack against Tibet was initiated just days after Google discontinued its Chinese language search services from mainland China.

High-profile cyberespionage has gained media attention in recent months after a sophisticated cyberattack was launched aimed at stealing intellectual property from the network of Google and more than 30 other corporations. Googel and security experts say that the attack originated from China.