MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google said hackers tried to steal passwords from hundreds of Gmail users, targeting the accounts of government officials in the U.S. and Asia.
The campaign, which appears to have originated in Jinan, China, probably used a so-called phishing scam to collect passwords with the goal of monitoring e-mail content, Eric Grosse, engineering director on the Google Security Team, said in a blog post Wednesday. The company said it detected and disrupted the campaign, secured users’ accounts and notified authorities.
The campaign against Gmail users comes amid growing concern about network security, prompted by recent cyberattacks against Sony and Lockheed Martin. 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.
“A lot of this goes on internationally,” said Christopher McNally, a fellow and political economist at the East-West Center in Honolulu. “In most situations, it’s certain rogue organizations or even individuals that are doing it for profit.”
In the recent case, Google’s internal systems weren’t affected, and the attempts didn’t involve a security problem with Gmail, Grosse said.
Phishing scams typically involve tricking users into sharing passwords that can then be used to obtain information.
In this case, hackers went after senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries, military personnel and journalists.
