Canadians uncover Chinese online spy ring

TORONTO, April 6 (UPI) -- University of Toronto researchers said they exposed a Chinese online spy system that collects secret information from 16 international governments and NATO.

The university's Munk Center for International Studies, the Ottawa security firm SecDev Group and the U.S. volunteer-driven Shadowserver Foundation dubbed the operation "Shadow Network" after an eight-month-long investigation, the Globe and Mail reported Tuesday.

The investigation traced the roots of the system to Chengdu in the Chinese province of Sichuan. It found the spying uses such innocuous sources of data theft as Google groups, Yahoo e-mail and Twitter accounts to infect computers and turn them into remotely controlled "spybots" that upload documents from a computer, the report said.

Among the stolen materials the Toronto researchers found were classified documents from the government of India on international relations and missile systems, all of the e-mail to and from the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, and data on NATO troop movement into Afghanistan, The New York Times said.

The Times quoted an unidentified Chinese state official as saying it was "ridiculous" to suggest Beijing was behind the operation.