Google points finger at China over Gmail hacking
Suspected Chinese hackers tried to steal the passwords of hundreds of Google email account holders, including those of senior US government officials, Chinese activists and journalists, the Internet company has claimed.
The perpetrators appeared to originate from Jinan, the capital of China’s eastern Shandong province, Google said. Jinan is home to one of six technical reconnaissance bureaus belonging to the People’s Liberation Army and a technical college that US investigators last year linked to a previous attack on Google.
Washington said it was investigating Google’s claims while the FBI said it was working with Google following the attacks — the latest computer-based invasions directed at multinational companies that have raised global alarm about Internet security.
The hackers recently tried to crack and monitor email accounts by stealing passwords, but Google (GOOG.O) detected and “disrupted” their campaign, the world’s largest Web search company said on its official blog.
The revelation comes more than a year after Google disclosed a cyberattack on its systems that it said it traced to China, and could further strain an already tense relationship between the Web giant and Beijing.
Google partially pulled out of China, the world’s largest Internet market by users, last year after a tussle with the government over censorship and a serious hacking episode.
“We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing,” Google said, referring to the practice where computer users are tricked into giving up sensitive information.
“The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users’ emails.”