Tibet Group's Email Attacked Before Dalai Lama's Visit

The official email account belonging to a Tibet organization from Canada has been hit by hackers and malicious emails have been sent from it.
The organization's representatives are convinced that these attacks are "highly targeted”, the general public not being affected by them.

It is believed that the purpose of the hits is to monitor those involved in organizing the visit of Tibet's spiritual leader to Montreal.

A couple of emails infected with a computer virus were sent from the hijacked email address in an attempt to install spyware on the computers of the groups which support the arrival of His Holiness.

In order to make the messages more credible, they were sent in the form of news releases made by the group's Executive Director Dermod Travis. One of them was actually a replica of a statement he made early in August and the other was made up by the attackers.

"These emails contained attachments with a keystroke virus intended to monitor activity on the computer that it infects. The virus is only activated if the accompanying attachment is opened by the recipient. The distribution of these emails by unknown hackers is highly targeted and does not include the general public," said Travis, according to The Tibet Post.

He also stated that "Canadians would never tolerate their fellow citizens trying to spy on them. We wouldn't tolerate our government spying on us. And the Canadian government must not tolerate foreign citizens or governments harassing those working on lawful public events in Canada."

Unfortunately, these events are not unusual when a visit by the Dalai Lama approaches, but so far nothing to this magnitude has occurred. Besides the email attacks, posters made specially for this event were subject to acts of vandalism.

The group is determined to report all these ill-intended practices to the proper authorities. Also, they don't wish to make speculations on the identity or the origin of the perpetrators.