Syrian Government Targeting Activists' Computers Via Skype

F-Secure is reporting the use by the Syrian government of a targeted attack on an anti-government activist's computer with a remote control trojan.

The company received a hard drive image of the infected computer and analyzed it. What they found was not especially sophisticated or even unusual. It was a commercially available remote control trojan program named "Xtreme RAT". See an image of the site below:

The victim of the attack had received a Skype message from another anti-government activist who had already been arrested. Combine that with the fact that the remote control program reports to an IP address owned by "Syrian Arab Republic — STE (Syrian Telecommunications Establishment)" and it's a good bet that the Skype message actually came from the government.

The nature of the attack verifies earlier reporting by CNN that a general campaign of spyware and identity theft had been launched against anti-government activists.