So seven months later, who does Villeneuve thing the culprits really are?

“We don’t know for sure who was behind the attacks, Villeneuve told the capacity audience. “It could be the Chinese government, but it just as easily could have been random.”

Villeneuve said that perhaps one diplomat was infected, then because that diplomat knew other diplomats the infection just spread. The other option is that the whole thing was a conspiracy to frame China, as nearly all the command and control servers were located in China.

Though Villeneuve wasn’t sure about who was behind GhostNet, he does suspect that other similiar botnets are out there, waiting to be discovered.

As for GhostNet itself, Villeneuve said that within a few hours of his report on the botnet being made public and published by the New York Times, the botnets command and control servers were shut off.

In my view, this is about as good as it gets in the cloak and dagger world of international cyber espionage. Personally I think the network was too well organized to be anything other than a well-funded group, government or otherwise.

Let’s just hope that Villeneuve and other ‘good people’ like him remain vigilant and detect other such efforts before too much damage is done.