Scammers based out of China have been hijacking the personal Gmail accounts of "hundreds of users," Google revealed on Wednesday. The company wrote in a blog post that the attacks appear to be originating out of Jinan, China and that the main goal appears to be to covertly monitor the contents of users' e-mail accounts. Some of the targeted users include Chinese activists, military personnel, journalists, senior US government officials, and officials in other Asian countries.
"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," wrote Google Security Team's Eric Grosse, who noted that the scammers are likely obtaining people's passwords through phishing. "But we believe that being open about these security issues helps users better protect their information online."
Grosse said that Google "detected and has disrupted" the campaign through its own abuse detection systems combined with user reports and a report by contagio about targeted attacks against military and government employees.
The revelation comes a year and a half after Google revealed that attacks originating out of China were targeting Google's own corporate infrastructure, and that the attackers were "accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists." Google eventually pulled most of its operations out of China and began redirecting its Chinese search engine towards Hong Kong, but that apparently hasn't stopped those interested in monitoring the communications of interesting parties. Google advises that users turn on two-step verification, use strong passwords, and check their forwarding addresses in case someone's getting a copy of all your e-mail—good advice for anyone, not just Chinese rights activists.
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