Posted on 06/01/2011 1:54:02 PM PDT by Fractal Trader
Google Inc. said hundreds of users of its email service were tricked into sharing their passwords with "bad actors" based in China, potentially further complicating relations between the Internet giant and the country with the highest number of Internet users.
Google, which has blamed China for a previous attack on the company's computer networks, said its security and abuse detection systems recently discovered that users of its popular Gmail service had fallen for what are called "phishing scams." Such exploits trick users into sharing their passwords, and that the campaign "appears to originate from Jinan, China" and targeted specific individuals.
Among the affected users are "senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries [predominantly South Korea], military personnel and journalists," said Eric Grosse, an engineering director on Google's security team, in a post on the company's blog.
The company declined to comment on the identities of the affected individuals, how it traced the attacks to Jinan or who may be behind the incident.
Mr. Grosse said the goal of the hijacking campaign "seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users' emails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to" get in-bound emails to be forwarded to accounts of their choosing.
He said the company notified victims of the hijackings and secured their accounts and added that it "notified relevant government authorities."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
And I thought that they would be targeting followers of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga.
By making itself friendly to log in, Google also makes itself easily spoofable. Multi-level logins, such as those used by banks, are harder to spoof but some people don’t want to go to all that trouble.
RE: China/Google alliance. You lie down with dogs; you get up with fleas.
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