There was a news story a while back about how .gov employees were using private email accounts at work and they were getting hacked by foreign hackers (eg gmail, Hotmail, etc.) . Wish i had bookmarked it now.
Anyone remember this?
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1394036/China-targeted-White-House-Gmail-hacking-Hillary-Clinton-calls-threat-serious.html
China targeted White House with Gmail hacking - as Hillary Clinton calls threat ‘very serious’
By Daily Mail Reporter
3 June 2011
(SNIP)
The security breach was revealed by Google which said victims had been carefully targeted in a scam to steal passwords traced to the city of Jinan in the Communist state’s Shangdong province.
The U.S. government will not reveal who has been targeted by the ‘phishing’ attacks but admitted they included senior administration officials.
President Obama’s administration insists no official email accounts were hacked into by the Chinese but there remains the possibility that official business was being discussed on employees’ personal emails.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are now investigating with Google’s help.
Darrell Issa, Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told the Wall Street Journal ‘If all White House officials were following rules prohibiting the use of personal email for official business, there would simply be no sensitive information to find.
(SNIP...continues with details about hackers’ methodology...)
Armed with the passwords, the hackers could access the user’s real email account and spy on genuine emails being sent between government officials.
Although the scam – which went on for months before being uncovered – targeted personal email accounts, rather than government accounts, officials could have forwarded their work emails to their personal Gmail accounts. (SNIP)