The
Contagio security blog posted evidence back in February of targeted attacks against government and military officials on Gmail. Today, nearly four months later, Google has finally admitted this is true: hundreds of personal accounts have been compromised by hackers it believes to be working out of Jinan, the capital of China's Shandong province. The accounts include those of "senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists." The hijackers' aim appears to have been to spy on their targets using Google's automatic forwarding function. But unlike the
PSN fiasco, Google insists its internal systems "have not been affected." Instead it seems the hackers used a phishing scam, possibly directing users to a spoof Gmail website before requesting their credentials. Google says its own "abuse detection systems" disrupted the campaign -- but in a footnote
right down at the bottom of their official blog page they also credit
Contagio and user reports.
Update: And in comes
China's response, courtesy of Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei. "Allegations that the Chinese government supports hacking activities are completely unfounded and made with ulterior motives." Ok then, that settles that.
Google admits sensitive email accounts have been hacked, some users knew months ago (update: China says wha?) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Jun 2011 05:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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