Thursday, June 2, 2011

Chinese Gmail Attack Targets 'Senior' U.S. Officials

Image representing Gmail as depicted in CrunchBaseGoogle revealed the suspected source of a hacking attack on Gmail accounts: users originating in China.

Eric Grosse, engineering director on the Google Security Team, said in a blog post Wednesday that specific user account credentials were targeted.

Targets included government officials from the U.S. and "several Asian countries" as well as political activists, journalists, and military personnel, Google said.

"The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users' e-mails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change peoples' forwarding and delegation settings,"

"It's important to stress that our internal systems have not been affected--these account hijackings were not the result of a security problem with Gmail itself. But we believe that being open about these security issues helps users better protect their information online," Grosse continued.

Google says it's notified those with affected accounts and has also secured the accounts. The company is encouraging users to add extra layers of security including designing more complex passwords, turning on two-step account verification, and only going through the company's secured "https://www.google.com" domain when logging on from a Web browser.

Google's blog post notes that "internal systems have not been affected—these account hijackings were not the result of a security problem with Gmail itself."

18 commentaires:

Alexander said...

everyone's being compromised these days :(

DIYgaming said...

Interesting stuff! i spent a -long- time reading the related articles too lol

baka1236 said...

hmmm... now emails... it's a conspiracy i say

Barbeque said...

WHAT?! now emails?!
what a world we live in..

fit4life said...

at least it was only THIER account and not something with google, google got security out the ass hole for their shit

Kelly said...

oh my god, could that happen to me?

Anonymous said...

Cyberwar is raging... US should throw some stuxnet on China...

Xenototh said...

Wait... google has to advise senior US officials to use stronger passwords?.... Really?

Franci said...

What is that for I wonder.

Lesha said...

i don't care much, since i don't have important stuff on mail

Alexis said...

Interesting, you would think google of all companies would be able to build more secure sites

GamerGanz said...

Wow thanks for sharing
keep those news coming!

kxxthanxx said...

why do they have gmail?

Blogging Skater said...

everyone is getting hacked these days

Thomas Magnussen said...

true that, blogging skater.

Lucky13 said...

It was a simple phishing scam, these days people gotta be more aware of what they're opening in their emails.

Anonymous said...

omg hackers everywhea!! i hope i dont get heacked!

Alpha said...

NO ONE IS SAFE

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