Google Inc. said Chinese hackers targeted the email accounts of senior U.S. officials and hundreds of other prominent people in a fresh computer attack certain to intensify growing concern about the security of the Internet.
The victims, including government and military personnel, Asian officials, Chinese activists and journalists, were tricked into sharing their Gmail passwords with “bad actors” based in China, Google said in an unusual blog post. The attack’s goal was to read and forward the victims’ email. The company, which in 2010 blamed China for an attack on its computer networks, said it recently discovered the Gmail campaign, which “appears to originate from Jinan, China,” and targeted specific individuals.
In Washington, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security said they were working with Google to investigate the attacks. “We have no reason to believe that any official U.S. government email accounts were accessed,” said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
Jinan, a large city about 250 miles south of Beijing, is home to one of the People’s Liberation Army’s technical reconnaissance bureaus, which serve as arms of China’s equivalent of the National Security Agency, according to a 2009 report from a committee created by Congress to study China. Google, which claims more than 200 million users for its free, Web-based Gmail email service, declined to comment on the identities of the affected individuals, how it traced the attacks to Jinan or who may be behind the incident.
The latest attack continues a troubling wave of incidents involving corporate and government computer networks, which have exposed private information of millions users and raised fears about the safety of government secrets. Last week, defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. said it had detected a significant attack against its computer networks.
Senior US Officials are using gmail…why am I not shocked? BTW Sony was hacked again today.
This is all Cheney’s fault for not nuking China when he had the chance.
What the heck are senior Government officials doing using GMail?
YEA! Good for China. Down with the corrupt US government. Power to the people. Shoot the traitors. Disobey the filthy beauracratics.
Overcome the oppressors.
I can shoot the invading yellow hordes, after the statists are eliminated.
The next false flag attack will be from “cyber-terrorists” This meme has been slowly propogated for a while now.
Stop spreading lies. There was no hacking involved.
These fuckwads broke rule #1 on computer security, they opened an unverified attachment from a sender they did not know, which led to a fake Gmail login to capture their password. They fell for oldest social engineering trick in the book and willfully surrendered their login details.
#2-Gmail is perfectly safe; it uses HTTPS &_&
“committee created by Congress to study China” – gee, that should be almost as helpful as a committee created by Congress to study the Interwebitubes – or electricity – or dirt.
#2 The answer is to take care of personal business.
Any and all e-mails I make as teacher by law must go through a web server that belongs to the school board and keeps a permanent record that can be used in court. To speak bluntly it is not confidential at all.
I would assume that the Fed gov does the same.
but I take it as “good news” that gmail was not hacked into but rather passwords were gained by fishing. That means to me if you aren’t a stupid dumb shit your gmail account is “safe.”
And I’ve read that government officials are not allowed to use personal email for government businesss and I assume vice versa?
Seems there is more FUD here than anything else. DON’T OPEN ATTACHMENTS FROM FOLKS YOU DON’T KNOW!!! I rarely even read email from people I don’t know and avoid automatic updates and requests to update my software.
I’m a happy camper.
You don’t want to send pictures of your wiener through your .gov account.
In #10, bobbo, I’m not a computer expert said: … stupid dumb shit your gmail account is “safe.”
I tend to agree with bobbo (don’t be astounded,) only a fucking idiot trusts what he gets from the internet or the world wide web.
I have my account (default on the Mac,) and my wife’s account (by some subterfuge in her Win 7 non administrative account [and her innate sense of paranoia,) set up to reject spam and the content is treated with rubber gloves.
I used to laugh at 419 spam, but lately even they’re not writing…
#2 and #9 Many government officials especially politicians at the federal and state level maintain separate email accounts. Official email accounts on government servers are subject to sunshine law at the state level and FIA inquiry at the federal. Never put anything in an email you wouldn’t show your grandma.
I think the “hack” went something like this:
Dear Rep. Weiner, this are the Twitter team. We have accidentally misplaced your username and password. Please e-mail us your password, along with credit card information and any “personal” photo you might have. Thank you.
Gmail. If cheap is good, free must be better.
North Americans seem to be babes in the woods when it comes to spying and security
Imagine how hard it guessing passwords – address , name , birthday,wife’s name , pet – dog or cats name
Welcome to life
I can’t say I feel sorry for all the political movers and shakers, getting cyber attacked by Red China. Isn’t this a case of “the dog biting the hand that feeds it”? Because China gets so much latitude from the US government and Congress, to do whatever it wants, and still remain a major world business partner. it’s pathetic. If this were an attack from anyone else, or even any other country, you can be sure there would be major repercussions on their ass.
Apparently China is too big to fail! And too big to be punished or sanctioned in any way, whatever its government does. Talk about having selective amnesia. What must China do to get some actionable notice? Gas some Jews?! Because that’s all that seems to count anymore with the US congress. They can do anything and everything Hitler did, right up until the gassing starts. And then finally, that will get some heat on their backs. I guess we should be grateful that there’s even that limitation!
Meanwhile, why isn’t the US Government pulling their internet access, the way they threaten to do (and do) for the extremely minor offenders? And Google could just lock the whole country’s IPs out of GMail. If that will make any difference. Of course, Chinese hackers have probably come up with ways around any blocks. Threaten to withhold IPv6 assignments for China, if they don’t stop the government sanctioned hacking.
Interesting side note about Sony. Still hasn’t fixed their security holes. But apparently it’s considered a bigger crime to point that out, by hacking them, and embarrassing them to take action. A case of “Emperor’s new clothes”, gets your eyes gouged out, if you say he’s naked. Meanwhile, Emperor Sony continues strutting on in his birthday suit.
I think Sony was too busy crafting that RootKit, to bother with hardening its networks against even the simplest of attacks. I’m so glad the CD Rootkit incident caused me to never trust Sony with anything private. I might buy a Sony product, now and then. But I’m not gonna sign my name to it. Screw their services.
In announcing a possible exit from China last week, Google did not specify how the accounts with its Gmail e-mail service were hacked into or by whom. Information since then has trickled out.
I just got off the phone with Google… they refused to help, stating that I violated the terms of their agreement.
Wow!
Guess anyone who uses gmail’s in for a big surprise WHEN THEY GET HACKED. AND YOU WILL GET HACKED and don’t expect google to help you. Frankly, I wish someone had posted this problem before I joined back when they first started. If I were you, I’d cancel my account right now. All my personal information was in there, thank god I made some tweaks to it before this. Is your personal info in your gmail account? Facebook, Linkedin, Tweeter are also going to cause you problems and you’ll get hacked…. I TRUSTED THESE FOLKS and I trusted these websites. Guess I’ll read the next Terms before signing on to anyone for free.
this email’s no longer mine, it’s been hacked. richcarbajal@gmail.com along with facebook, tweeter, linkedin, and so on… NO thanks to GMAIL.