Fake memo but real code? India-U.S. hacking mystery deepens

By Frank Jack Daniel

NEW DELHI | Thu Jan 12, 2012 12:00am IST

(Reuters) - A memo that triggered a U.S. investigation into a possible cyber-attack by Indian military intelligence is probably a fake, but it is clear from leaked documents that serious security breaches did take place.

A little-known hacker group, 'Lords of Dharmaraja', began posting the documents last year, but only drew widespread attention after the anti-virus software firm Symantec confirmed on Saturday that a segment of its source code had been accessed by the group.

Reuters has obtained a large digital cache appearing to contain emails that were posted by the group but were quickly blocked by file-sharing sites.

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"It's also possible that Pakistan's hackers have done it, or China's hackers," said Mukesh Saini, an expert on cyber-security who served on the secretariat of India's national security council, an intelligence agency, until 2006

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"An individual could have hacked someone's personal computer and handed it over to the embassy. There are so many means and measures," said Saini, who himself was charged with leaking secrets to Washington in 2006. He proclaims his innocence.

"There may be cooperation between India and the United States, the United States may have shared them, or India could have done the hack ... or a third country may have handed it to India," said Saini.

It is also unclear how Symantec's source code ended up with the Lords of Dharmaraja, whose public face goes by the name Yamatough on a Twitter feed.

Yamatough, whose profile picture shows a Tibetan painting of Dharmaraja, the Hindu god of death and justice, follows many members of the "Anonymous" hacking collective, and Symantec attributes the hack to that group.

"We are still investigating exactly where or how Anonymous accessed the code, but to date we have found no evidence that we shared any information with the Indian government," Symantec said in a statement.

"If the Indian government was indeed in possession of the code - as Anonymous claims and which has not yet been verified - we have no indication that it came from Symantec or as a result of our software assurance processes."

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