The University of Toronto – Canada revealed that more than 1200 computers in over 100 countries were affected. The system called “GhostNet” has hacked computers in embassies, foreign ministries, government departments and offices in several cities belonging to the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan government-in-exile, the Canadian team said.

Initially, the Dalai Lama’s office approached the Munk Centre for an International Studies to investigate allegations of Chinese espionage. After 10 months of study, they found that a far larger spy network is targeting more than 1295 infected computer in 103 countries.

The researchers said that the main focus of the system is on government of south and south-east Asian countries. The Ghostnet system is still alive with a wide-ranging set of tools through which hackers can retrieve documents, and turn on web cameras and audio system, from remote place.

“One of the characteristics of cyber-attacks of the sort we document here is the ease by which attribution can be obscured,” Deibert, director of Munk’s Citizen Lab

Prevx, a U.K based security firm, find that an unknown website with operating server from Ukraine, has used to harvest confidential information from 160,000 infected computers before it was shutdown this month. The site was on online still nearly the security researchers alerted the internet service provider about the theft. The report states that the site collected information from 5000 infected computers every day.

It doesn’t stop with personal computers; they have also stolen data from infected computers of banks, and Governments. Prevx said that it has alerted the site’s Internet provider, the FBI and U.K. authorities about the breach it discovered. The company also talked to the affected bank, Doraville, Ga.-based Metro City Bank, a community bank whose Web site lists four locations, and Prevx said the bank has removed the infected computers.

“The level of amateurness speaks to how widespread it is,” Joe Stewart, a SecureWorks Inc. He helped to shutdown a command-and-control server of a botnet that had infected more than 378,000 computer and more than 460,000 username and password.

Researchers try to deactivate the server before criminals get the data from them.