Google Uncovers Suspected Source of Gmail Hacking to be from China

Google GOOG revealed the suspected source of a hacking attack on Gmail accounts: users originating in China. Eric Grosse, engineering director on the Google Security Team, said in a blog post Wednesday that specific users were targeted. According to the post, "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." Google has withdrawn its operations in China this year after it was widely speculated in the media that sources within the country hacked into the accounts. The post notes that "The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users' emails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change peoples' forwarding and delegation settings." According to a Bloomberg report, "The campaign against Gmail users comes amid growing concern about network security, prompted by recent cyber attacks against Sony Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. Google said last year it was the victim of attacks against its systems that originated in China and focused on human-rights activists' accounts. Google said it was no longer willing to censor search results in China, and then started redirecting users there to its Hong Kong service." Google's blog post notes that "internal systems have not been affected—these account hijackings were not the result of a security problem with Gmail itself."