It looks like China is going to have yet another reason to loathe Google after the search engine giant caught an entity trying to hack Gmail accounts via social engineering.
Through the strength of our cloud-based security and abuse detection systems*, we recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing. This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists. (Official Google Blog)
Although Google isn’t directly accusing the People’s Republic orchestrating these attacks, they did note how unusual it was for those engaged in Phisihing campaigns to target specific users instead of going after the general audience.
Google thwarted the Phishing campaign and is encouraging everyone to utilize their 2-step verification feature to prevent similar attacks in the future.
Note: Is it me, or does it seem like China is either instigating or turning a blind eye when it comes to these types of attacks?
Originally posted on June 1, 2011 @ 5:14 pm
