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Year of the Gh0st Rat - Talk by Greg Walton

By Gregory Walton, Sec Dev Fellow@Citizenlab, University of Toronto

On Friday 29 August at 2.30 p.m. at DIIR, Greg Walton will give a talk on information warfare and its implications for the Tibetan cause. Here are his comments:

I am going to talk about Chinese cyber-espionage directed against non-state actors, including Tibetans and their supporters.

My presentation is entitled, “Year of the Gh0st RAT”, and for those who are wondering, this refers to a Remote Administration Tool that we have seen used in these attacks.

The presentation is divided into two distinct parts. In the first I very briefly outline the technology behind these attacks on our organizations. In the second I part I try to address the question that journalists most often ask, that is, “who is responsible?”

I have subdivided the technology section to include comments on: the message that carries the exploit, the exploit itself, the back door, the control connection, and the control server. Similarly I have subdivided the second section to consider whether the attackers have government affiliation, the state’s cost-benefit analysis in allowing hackers to operate within its borders, the political context, and evidence of recruitment from China’s computer underground.

In order to look at policy implications for decision makers in the CTA, I will then look 12 years into the future [the next time that it’s the year of the RAT — 2020 by the western calendar]. Will the new Tibetan University at Bangalore have become a centre of excellence for IT security — offering BSc and MSc in Computer Security affiliated with top universities in the west? Taking the example of the Special Frontier Force , will Tibet have enough ITSEC experts to field a CYBER FRONTIER FORCE? Should CTA be participating in moves towards international treaties to regulate information warfare — like Estonia for example, after they were taken offline in 2007. In short, is Tibet ready for the coming cyberwar with China?

Copyright © 2008 Tibet Sun

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