China hacks Gmail, no Weiners on the grill
Image via CrunchBaseGoogle said Wednesday that some users of Gmail, its e-mail service, had been the targets of a clandestine campaign originating in China that was aimed at stealing passwords and monitoring e-mail accounts.My internet security software found a Trojan horse on my Gmail account and disabled it. I can't imagine why anyone in China would think my email very interesting. I really put all the interesting stuff in my blog which they should be able to read without hacking anything.
In a blog post, the company said that the campaign appeared to originate from the city of Jinan, China, and that the attackers had hijacked the personal Gmail accounts of senior government officials in the United States, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries, military personnel and journalists.
It is the second time that Google has pointed to China as the source of an intrusion. Last year it said it had traced a sophisticated attack on its systems to China-based perpetrators. The accusation led to a rupture of the company’s relationship with China and a decision by Google not to cooperate with censorship demands that the Chinese government placed upon its search engine. As a result, Google decided to base its Chinese search engine in Hong Kong.
Jinan, a provincial capital in eastern China, is home to an important military installation and the Lanxiang Vocational School, which was founded with military support. Last year investigators looking into the attack on Google’s systems said they had traced some of the hacking activity back to the school. Government and school officials strongly denied any connection with the attack, and China’s foreign ministry said linking the Chinese authorities to such attacks was “baseless, highly irresponsible and hype with ulterior motives.” Government press officials were not immediately available to comment on Google’s latest announcement.
A 2009 study of China’s online warfare program by the defense contractor Northrop Grumman identified six regions in China that had military efforts in this field. Jinan was one of them.
Google said that the goal of the latest effort appeared to be to monitor users’ e-mails. Once the intruders logged into the accounts with the stolen passwords, they could change mail forwarding settings so that copies of messages would be sent to another address. The company said it had disrupted the campaign and had notified the victims. Google also said it had told government officials about the intrusions.
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I suspect the Chinese obsession with Gmail is tied to others with a stronger interest in what is happening in China. The stuff about China I use comes from open source media and my on thoughts about their command economy and its flaws. If they want to waste their money on building empty cities for millions, I am OK with that. It is less harmful than some other things they could be doing with their money.
BTW, is this an act of war under the Pentagon's new cyber warfare doctrine? I would like to see us mess with these hackers.
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