Hackers Attack CTA’s Chinese-Language Website

August 13, 2013 5:50 pm

DHARAMSHALA: A researcher at a leading computer security firm said the Central Tibetan Administration’s Chinese-language website has been hacked and infected with viruses.
Kurt Baumgartner, a researcher at Kaspersky Lab, said in a blog, that the security breaches involved a technique known as “water holing,” where hackers first infect a site that is frequently visited by people whose computers they want to control.
He said: “At this point in time, it seems that the few systems attacked with this code are located in China and the US, although there could be more. Technical evidence suggests the group behind the campaign was also responsible for previous breaches on the website as well as attacks on groups that focus on human rights in Asia.”
Hackers use malicious software that automatically drops viruses on computers running Microsoft Corp’s Windows and Apple Inc’s Mac operating systems and infect machines by exploiting security bugs in Oracle Corp’s Java software.
The Tibetan Computer Resource Centre of the Central Tibetan Administration today cleared the website of the virus.
In addition to Chinese, the CTA maintains websites in English and Tibetan languages to educate the international community about the political, human rights and environmental situation in Chinese occupied Tibet.

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Book Review: A Walk Through the History of the Roof of the World

Book Review: A Walk Through the History of the Roof of the World
By Thubten Samphel
Glimpses of Tibetan History
By Claude Arpi
Tibet Museum, DIIR, Dharamsala, 2013, pp. 56

I was there at the very beginning, the beginning of creation, so to speak. For the winter of 2009, I took my family to Auroville, a community which is guided by the way of life inspired by Sri Aurobindo, an Indian nationalist leader and mystic who based himself in the French enclave of Pondicherry in south India to escape harassment of the British Raj. Our time spent in this truly international city coincided with His Holiness the Dalai Lama inaugurating the Pavilion of Tibetan Culture. As its name implies, the Pavilion of Tibetan Culture is a centre devoted to the study of Tibetan culture, the pet project of Claude Arpi, a lover of Tibetan culture and an expert on everything Tibet and the politics that engulf the country.

According to Claude Arpi, after speaking to young Tibetans about Tibet’s past, His Holiness the Dalai Lama requested him to capture the entire history of Tibet in a comprehensive slide presentation. He wanted the French Tibet scholar to do 25 panels with succinct explanations about their background. His Holiness the Dalai Lama hoped that this would inspire young Tibetans and others to delve more deeply into Tibetan history for them to better understand and take pride in the past of the Tibetan people.  Claude Arpi said that perhaps to give him strength and to bless him on this arduous journey into Tibetan history, His Holiness the Dalai Lama presented him with two thangkas of Shantarakshita and Guru Padmasambhava, two Indian Buddhist masters most responsible for planting firm roots of Buddhism in Tibet and the three religious kings who made sure that this happened in their realm.

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