GhostNet: Can Your Computer Be Used to Watch You?

I have always been a little suspicious of the cameras that are built into computers, its just a little too 1984 for me. If this report is true then their is tremendous opportunity for an invasion of privacy the likes of which has only existed in science-fiction. Apparently its some form of Malware that invades and takes control, it arrives in an e-mail and then Big Brother is watching.

From Forbes:

The Information Warfare Monitor, a Canadian cyber-espionage watchdog, goes to pains not to point the finger of blame at the Chinese government for a massive China-based cyberspy ring it has uncovered. "While our analysis reveals that numerous politically sensitive and high-value computer systems were compromised in ways that circumstantially point to China as the culprit," it writes in a report issued March 29, "we do not know the exact motivation or the identity of the attacker(s), or how to accurately characterize this network of infections as a whole."

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Nearly 1,300 computers in more than 100 countries have been attacked and have become part of an computer espionage network apparently based in China, security experts alleged in two reports Sunday.

Computers -- including machines at NATO, governments and embassies -- are infected with software that lets attackers gain complete control of them, according to the reports. One was issued by the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies in conjunction with the Ottawa, Canada-based think tank The SecDev Group; the second came from the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

Researchers have dubbed the network GhostNet. The network can not only search a computer but see and hear the people using it, according to the Canadian report.

"GhostNet is capable of taking full control of infected computers, including searching and downloading specific files, and covertly operating attached devices, including microphones and web cameras," the report says.

The Chinese deny any wrongdoing.

(CNN) -- Analysts in China are dismissing claims that nearly 1,300 computers in more than 100 countries have been attacked, and have become part of a cyber-espionage network apparently based in China.

"This is purely another political issue that the West is trying to exaggerate," Song Xiaojun, a Beijing-based strategy and military analyst, told China Daily, a state-run newspaper.

Zhu Feng, a professor with the school of international studies at Peking University, added: "Cyber security has been a global issue, but this time those who see China as an emerging threat again have picked the subject as a new weapon."

NYTIMES-TORONTO — A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded.

In a report to be issued this weekend, the researchers said that the system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China, but that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese government was involved.

The researchers, who are based at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto, had been asked by the office of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader whom China regularly denounces, to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware.

Their sleuthing opened a window into a broader operation that, in less than two years, has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York.