Chinese hacker breaks into hundreds of Gmail accounts including senior U.S. government officials

Google on Wednesday confirmed that a hacker from China was able to break into hundreds of Gmail accounts. The company detected the breach and notified victims of the attack, as well as relevant government authorities. Several high-profile accounts were hacked according to the Associated Press, including senior U.S. government personnel, Chinese political activists and government officials from South Korea. The actual hack was a phishing scheme that prompted users to enter their user names and passwords on a web page. “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,” Google said on its official Gmail blog.
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Tags: attacks, China, email account, gmail, google, government, hacking, South Korea, U.S.

Jonathan S. Geller