Hacked Countries. Foreign Ministries of Bhutan, Bangladesh, Philippines, Iran, Brunei, Iran, Barbados. Multiple Embassies of India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Germany. Other targets are in India, Taiwan USA, Russia, Vietnam, ADB, Associated Press, NATO, Malayasia, Solomon Islands, Malta, Sri Lanka and Office of H.H Dalai Lama.

In a related development, a Japanese IT consultant Mama San told Kuensel that he had found the same virus in four to five other computers in Bhutan in early March before the above report came out. “The same virus was something new then and, although I ran many anti-virus programmes, I was not able to remove the virus or trace its source,” said Mama San.

According to the report, the virus is sent via familiar looking emails with attached files, which once opened allows the virus to enter the system and the hacker to take control of the computer. The hacker could then steal and receive all classified information on the computer, correspondence and also activate the webcam and recorder to monitor the room.

Meanwhile, the report has already alerted the foreign ministry, department of information technology (DIT) and the labour ministry.

Foreign minister, Lyonpo Ugyen Tshering, said, “We’ve appointed our officials to make an assessment of what happened and what we should do.” The minister, however, clarified that the ministry’s computers did not contain any sensitive information.

Foreign ministry’s PPD head Sonam Tobgye said that the ministry had studied the online reports and were running some recommended anti-virus programmes in all their 60 computers to detect the alleged virus.

“This comes as quite a big surprise and is a wake up call for the ministry and the government,” said Lyonpo Ugyen Tshering. The foreign ministry had already experienced other hacking in November and December 2008. The websites of ACC, National Assembly, GNHC and others have also been hacked in the recent past.

Meanwhile, DIT under Director Tenzin Choeda has nominated a small team to study the situation and come up with an action plan. “This isn’t a major issue right now but, in five years time, around 75 percent of our government services will be online and this is an incident that reminds us about our vulnerability,” he said. “We have to prepare to deal with this type of thing.” He said that the government was coming out with an IT security policy, which they would implement across the board.

The report was published by researchers from a Canada-based think tank SecDev Group and the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies, which first discovered the virus in the His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s office computer. The report alleged that the viruses were traced to computers based at Hainan in China, aimed mainly at strategic and economic interests linked to China, like various foreign ministries, embassies and institutions of its neighbours.

However, there was no evidence of the involvement of the Chinese government, which has already issued an official denial on the issue.