Incidents

Save Darfur Coalition's Site Hacked from China

FBI involved

By Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor

24th of March 2008, 22:06 GMT

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The Save Darfur Coalition is a non-profit group created to draw attention to the ongoing genocide caused by civil war in western Sudan's Darfur region. Relying on the strong commercial agreements between China and Sudan, the group is trying to

get the Asian country to pressure Sudan's government into stopping the killing, but so far it has been unsuccessful. Furthermore, they have found their web site hacked and an unauthorized entry was granted access to the email and web server.

After checking the IP of the attacker, Brooks-LaSure, one of the group's spokespeople, said that the computers used were based in China, and continued noting that probably "someone in Beijing is trying to send us a message." There were no signs of traditional hacking, like text left behind and malware having been installed on Save Darfur Coalition's machine. Instead, the criminals seemed to have been more interested in gathering information and data about the group.

Other groups working towards the same goal might have been hit as well, Brooks-LaSure said, after noticing very carefully targeted emails that were closely connected with the ongoing situation. Installing malicious software was a given with the attacks, just the same as the attempts to poison the computers of pro-Tibetan activists discovered by security company F-Secure. The attempts of exploiting one of the numerous Adobe Acrobat software security flaws have been discovered in time, though, and those interested have been warned.

The Chinese involvement in both of the attacks mentioned above is not certain, as it was often proved that computers in Asia have been used as jump points for cybercriminals residing in totally different parts of the world. However, the number of attacks being traced back to machines in the Asian country is increasing every day. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the matter closely, according to spokeswoman Debbie Weierman.

TAGS:

incident | hack | china | save darfur coalition | sudan

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