SAN FRANCISCO: Google said that a cyber spying campaign originated in China had targeted Gmail accounts of senior US officials,military personnel,journalists and Chines political activists.
We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords,likely through phishing,” Google security team engineering director Eric Groose said in a blog post.
“The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users’ emails,with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change peoples’ forwarding and delegation settings,” he said.
The campaign appeared to originate in Jinan,China,Grose said.Those affected included senior US government officials,Chinese political activists,military personnel,journalists and officials in several Asian countries,predominately South Korea,he said.
China denied it supported hacking activities and said it was part of lobal efforts to combat computer security threats.
“Allegations that China supports hacking activities are completely unfounded and made with ulterior motves,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei Hong.
Groose said it had notified victims and secured their accounts.
He added that the relevant government authorities had also been identified.
The White House was investigating the situation but had no reason to believe that Gmail accounts of senior government officials were hacked,an official said.