Suspected Chinese hackers tried to steal the passwords of hundreds of Google e-mail account holders, including those of senior US government officials, Chinese activists and journalists, the Internet company said.
The claim by the world’s largest Web search engine sparked an angry response from Beijing, which said blaming China was “unacceptable,” pointing to further tensions in an already strained relationship with Google.
The perpetrators appeared to originate from Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province, China, Google said. Jinan is home to one of six technical reconnaissance bureaus belonging to the People’s Liberation Army and a technical college US investigators last year linked to a previous attack on Google.
Washington said it was investigating Google’s claims while the FBI said it was working with Google following the attacks — the latest computer-based invasions directed at multinational companies that have raised global alarm about Internet security.
Andrew Davies of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an independent security and defense think tank, said governments needed to pay more attention to hacking no matter where it originated from.
“I think there has been a certain lack of appreciation of the looming threat around the world,” Davies said. “We’ve been in catch-up mode for the last couple of years and it’s been hard to wake up Western governments to the magnitude of the threat.”
The hackers recently tried to crack and monitor e-mail accounts by stealing passwords, but Google detected and “disrupted” their campaign, the company said on its official blog. Google said it had notified the victims.
The revelation comes more than a year after Google disclosed a cyberattack on its systems that it said it traced to China. Google partially pulled out of China, the world’s largest Internet market by users, last year after a tussle with the government over censorship.
“We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing,” Google said, referring to the practice where computer users are tricked into giving up sensitive information.
It “affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users, including among others, senior US government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists.”
A Washington-based security expert, Mila Parkour, first reported the Gmail attacks on her blog in February, saying they appeared to have started last year and were invasive.
China’s Foreign Ministry said it “cannot accept” accusations hackers in China tried to break into hundreds of Gmail accounts.
Google did not say the Chinese government was behind the attacks or say what might have motivated them.
However, a former US government official who served in China said he was fairly sure the Chinese government was responsible. He said it was a sign of Beijing’s fears that contagion from the Arab “jasmine” uprisings could spread to China.
“I’m fairly certain it’s the Chinese government, and probably the PLA [People’s Liberation Army],” said the former official, who asked that his name not be used.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) plans to make advanced 3-nanometer chips in Japan, stepping up its semiconductor manufacturing roadmap in the country in a triumph for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s technology ambitions. TSMC is to adopt cutting-edge technology for its second wafer fab in Kumamoto, company chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. That is an upgrade from an original blueprint to produce 7-nanometer chips by late next year, people familiar with the matter said. TSMC began mass production at its first plant in Japan’s Kumamoto in late 2024. Its second fab, which is still under construction, was originally focused on
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS