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Foreign governments hack New Zealand government computers
Asia Pacific News.Net
Monday 10th September, 2007
Government computer systems have been hacked into by foreign governments, the chief of New Zealand's intelligence agency says.
Government departments Web sites have been attacked, information has been stolen and hard-to-detect software has been installed that could be used to take control of computer systems, Security Intelligence Service director Warren Tucker is quoted as saying in The Dominion Post on Tuesday.
In his first interview since taking up the post in November, Mr Tucker told the Wellington-based newspaper there was evidence that foreign governments were responsible for the attacks.
He would not discuss what country was responsible but referred to comments by Canada's security service about Chinese spying activities.
Russia and China have been implicated in attacks on the British parliament's computer system.
Mr Tucker also noted the bungled attempt by Mossad agents from Israel to secure New Zealand passports in 2004.
China was accused last week of hacking into German Government systems and the Pentagon's computer systems in the United States.
Mr Tucker said the SIS and its kindred agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, had responded to the cyber attacks by stepping up a security awareness campaign.
In some cases, departments did not even realise their computer systems had been breached.
Sensitive information had been stolen and attempts had been made to gain access to classified information.
In one attack, a department had been penetrated and a programme had been inserted to generate bogus but genuine looking e-mails. Mr Tucker would not name the department or elaborate.
But he said the SIS was stepping up its foreign intelligence gathering operations as part of a realignment of the service, which had just 166 staff when he took over but now has over 200.
"As we've stepped up our activities we've become more concerned about what we have found," said Mr Tucker, who consented to the interview on condition that he would not be questioned about Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui.
Mr Tucker told The Dominion Post the terrorist threat to New Zealand was low but rising - a reflection of overseas concerns about Islamic extremists and the radicalisation of some communities.
The service was engaged on issues of real concern to New Zealand. "The relatively small number of people we monitor are the sort of people you would want us to monitor and would be surprised if we didn't."
The SIS had also moved to boost its security vetting of people entering New Zealand and to speed up security clearance processes for people handling sensitive Government information.  Email this story to a friend
Comments on this story
Charlie Chen
09-11-07, 09:57 AM |
Foreign governments hack New Zealand government computers
There are a least 8 China Hacker Groups. we call them as HuBei Jun(Jun for military troop)
ShangHai Jun, Beijing/TienJing Jun, GuoDong Jun, FuJian Jun, SiChuan Jun, JianSu Jun, SiAnn Jun.
Through incidents handling and investigation with law enforcements,
we found some evidences to prove the china hackers (targeted attack/ spearing phishing)
were come from government (military,intelligent dept and public security).
We have inspect the tools, from the begining trojaned e-mail, backdoor, and realy tools in the way stations.
At first, using Microsoft word (*.doc) file with exploit, to drop backdoors or download spyware from other way stations.
And the backdoor connect back to way station, when hacker came from China (fixed IP or ADSL) to remote controlling victims.
What they want is to collect the contact list files (outlook, MSN ...) to build a huge database about relationships for future use,
from the contact list, hackers can send a 'well-make' trojaned mail to the others in the contact list, then victims
will trust the e-mail’s subject and fake e-mail source, open it and been compromised. And, periodically jump back to collect the lastest
documents in all file types. Even steal your mail account to have a copy of your mail boxes.
From the official document shows, the cyber operation was directly sponsored or supported by General Staff Department Sec. Four. And the evidences shows they:
(1) Organized: have principle, formal check-in/out time,
in our domain name (used by backdoor) observations, they start to work at 0700 GMT+8 Round 1, 1150 Lunch, 1400 Round 2, 1730 Take a break,
then, depends on group, have night team, to hack foreign countries.
(2) the Tools. not common seen in public Internet .
some hacker groups using the same military produced/purchased hacking tools.
(3) the source IP we sniffer from incident handling, can be directly mapping to military regions of China.
the story is on going everyday!
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waltky
09-12-07, 03:12 PM |
They tryin' to figure out how to crash ever’body’s computer system...
:eek:
China 'hacked our computers'
September 12, 2007 - Computer networks were classified; Federal Government will not comment; New Zealand confirms foreign hacking
]
CHINA has allegedly tried to hack into highly classified government computer networks in Australia as part of a broader international operation. The Howard Government yesterday would neither confirm nor deny that its agencies, including the Defence Department, had been subject to cyber attack from China, but government sources acknowledge that thwarting such assaults is a continuous challenge. “It’s a serious problem, it’s ongoing and it’s real," one senior government source said.
Western intelligence experts say that China has also targeted the US, Canada, Germany and Japan as part of its global intelligence-gathering effort. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday confirmed that foreign intelligence agencies had tried to hack into government computer networks, but said they had not compromised top-secret data banks. “The assurance I’ve been given by intelligence agencies is that no classified information has been at risk at all," Miss Clark said. “We have very smart people to provide protection every time an attack is tried. Obviously we learn from that.
“What I can stress is that absolutely no classified information has ever been penetrated by these attacks." While Miss Clark knew which countries were involved, she would not name them, saying her Government had not spoken to the nations concerned about the problem. “That’s not the way intelligence matters are handled," she said.
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