Google Warns Gmail Users Over State Sponsored Attacks

Google Warns Gmail Users Over 'State-Sponsored Attacks'

By Daniel Ionescu, PCWorld Jun 6, 2012 6:30 AM

Google believes a subset of Gmail users may be the target of what it calls “state-sponsored” malicious attacks. Certain Gmail users will see a warning message over this issue from now on, although this doesn’t particularly mean your account was hacked.

Google is being secretive over the nature of the attacks. Eric Grosse, Google’s vice president of security engineering said in a blog post: “We can’t go into the details without giving away information that would be helpful to these bad actors, but our detailed analysis -- as well as victim reports -- strongly suggest the involvement of states or groups that are state-sponsored.”

There aren’t any clues on the source of the attacks either, but Google has been involved in spats with China over the past year, alleging that the country’s government was behind the hacking of Gmail accounts of several high-profile U.S. officials.

PCWorld