According to the San Jose Mercury News Google verified that individual email accounts were the target of these attacks. Accounts belonging to US Officials, Journalists, Businessmen and women, just about anyone who uses their Gmail account to talk about work.
The attack they used is called “Spear Phishing”.
In this kind of attack the gmail user ( YOU ) receives an email from someone they may know with an attachment. When you click it it takes you to a screen where you believe you must authenticate your gmail user name and password…. BUT IT ISN’T GOOGLE – IT IS THE HACKERS.
You fill out the user name and password and then it redirects you back to your regular gmail email interface.
You think your computer just forgot it was already on Google for a second… opps.
Advice / How To Avoid This
Look at the address of the website asking you to fill-out the authentication form. If you think you are on Google, but the address does not have “Google.com” anywhere in the address STOP.
Close your browser (to delete any non-persist ant cookies) and the next time you are on your google mail account delete the message. No need to forward it to Google – they and the FBI are already aware of the problem.
Google Gmail accounts hacked from China - San Jose Mercury News
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