02 Jun 2011
Google has confirmed that hundreds of attacks have been made on personal Gmail accounts of senior US government officials, political activists, military personnel and journalists.
Giving details of the hack in a blog post, Google suggests that the attempt to collect user passwords originated in Jinan, China.
"The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users' email, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change peoples' forwarding and delegation settings," reads the blog.
"Google detected and has disrupted this campaign to take users' passwords and monitor their emails. We have notified victims and secured their accounts. In addition, we have notified relevant government authorities.
"It's important to stress that our internal systems have not been affected – these account hijackings were not the result of a security problem with Gmail itself".
Security company Sophos suggests that government and other high profile officials should be more cautious about how they store sensitive information.
"One thing that people should be asking themselves, is why are they storing sensitive information in cloud based accounts in the first place?" said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"The recent news headlines claim that senior US political and military officials were being targeted by these hackers, but surely they shouldn't be storing confidential or sensitive information in their webmail account," he added.
"Users should always think about the data that they are storing in their web email, because if it's only protected by a username and password, it may actually be less secure than your regular work email system."
Having spent years tracing the ultimate security audit for my websites which involves tracking every hacker, looking up every network company that comes my way, researching there employees I ended up leaving the following note on the bottom of all my security files:
#Conclusion: ALL BUT 3 HACKING AND FORUM SPAM ATTEMPTS ARE IN SOME WAY ASSOSIATED WITH THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
#IN EVERY CASE OF IT SEEMING OTHERWISE, THEY ALL TRACE BACK TO Internet Software/Systems Consortium ISC CONTRACTED TO PREVENT HACKING AND INTERNET MISUSE
#I CAN CLEARLY SURMISE THAT THIS CONTRACTED AGENCY IS ACTUALLY THE BIGGEST THREAT TO US SECURITY AND CREATES
#MORE INTERNET BASED THREATS GLOBALLY AND ESPECIALLY TO THE USA THAN ANY OTHER NETWORK ON EARTH.
#THEY DO THIS CLEARLY TO CREATE A PURPOSE FOR THEMSELVS AND TO FORCE FOR MORE FUNDING, SOMEONE IN THE US GOVERNMENT WITH BALLS SHOULD TAKE THEM THE (SENSORED) OUT.
#IN LAMENS TERMS, THE US GOVERNMENT ARE FUNDING THERE ENEMIES WITHOUT ANY KNOWLEDGE, AND THESE PEOPLE ARE THE ALLMIGHTY (SENSORED)STAIN OF THE INTERNET.
#GLOBALLY ONLY 2 HACKERS IN CHINA AND 1 HACKER IN RUSSIA ACTUALLY POSE ANY THREAT, ALL OTHER GENUINE HACKING ATTEMPTS COME FROM US FUNDED Internet Software/Systems Consortium ISC WHO APPARENTLY HIJACK MAINLY CHINEESE AND RUSSIAN NETWORKS AND WEBSITES USING BOTS AND INJECTION, THEN USE THOSE NETWORKS TO ATTACK THERE OWN GOVERNMENT AND OTHER NETOWRKS SO THAT THEY CAN TAKE THEM OVER WHILE PUSHING FOR MORE FUNDS FROM THE us.
TAKE OUT ISC AND GLOBAL HACKING WILL BE REDUCED TO 7 BILLION RESPECTABLE PEOPLE WHO REALLY DONT ACTUALLY BOTHER ANYMORE BECAUSE WE EVOLVED, BAR OFCORSE THE 2 CHINEESE HACKERS AND THAT RUSSIAN DUDE.
Posted by: WikiLeaks 09 Jun 2011
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