The allegation was made after hackers seized control of the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Government-in Exile’s official Chinese language website on Tuesday and blocked Tibetan officials from accessing it in what experts said was likely an attempt to obtain readers’ data.
Tibetan cyber-security officials lost control of their own site for three hours which, according to their advisers, was enough time for the hackers to access the details of up to 300 visitors.
The attack is the latest of a series of suspected Chinese cyber attacks on websites popular with Tibetans in China and beyond. They include the Dalai Lama’s site DalaiLama.com, the Tibet Times, which was shut down temporarily, the Voice of Tibet radio station and the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
Lobsang Sither, a leading Tibetan cyber-security consultant who has been leading a public education campaign to train exiled Tibetans to protect their digital profiles, said he had no doubt China was behind this latest attack.
He said Chinese hackers were trying to acquire as much data as possible on Tibetans exiled in India and to intercept their emails and web-chats with relatives and friends in Tibet.
He said one web-chat site, WeChat, had been used this year by Chinese officials to track several Tibetans who voiced nationalist opinions and jail them.
Use of the application has soared among Tibetans in China as smartphones and 3G networks become more widely accessible. It has also became popular with Tibetans living in exile in India who used it to message relatives on the other side of the border. But the application effectively gives the Chinese government free access to the user’s phone and email accounts.
Earlier this year several Tibetans were arrested and jailed after using WeChat to send post photographs showing the self-immolation protests of Tibetan Buddhist monks.
One of them, Namkha Jam, was jailed for six years earlier this year.
Another, Lobsang Kunchok, a 40 year old monk from Kirti Monastery in Ngaba, was arrested after he used his iPhone WeChat app to post a photograph of an immolation protest. He was given a suspended death sentence.
“We are trying to raise public awareness among Tibetans We are focusing on basic online hygiene to teach Tibetans not to click on attachments or downloads, to use secure email protocols, to only buy genuine software,” he said.
“Tibetans [in exile] are connected to other Tibetans in Tibet, so if they [China] can access our emails, they can track down Tibetans sharing information,” he said.
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