Google reveals hacking of gmail, likely by Chinese

Google revealed yesterday that unknown hackers likely originatingfrom central China tried to hack into the gmail accounts of hundredsof users, including senior US government officials, Chineseactivists and journalists.

The world's largest internet company said on its official blogthat the hackers, who appeared to originate from Jinan, China,recently tried to crack and monitor email accounts by stealingpasswords, but Google detected and "disrupted" the campaign.

It notified the victims and relevant governments, Google added inits blog post.

Google shares slipped finished 0.7 per cent lower at $525.60.

"We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords,likely through phishing," Google said on its official blog.

"This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China,affected what seem to be the personal gmail accounts of hundreds ofusers, including among others, senior US government officials,Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries(predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists."

The US has warned that a cyber attack - presumably if it isdevastating enough - could result in real-world militaryretaliation, although analysts say it could be difficult to detectits origin with full accuracy.

The attacks are the latest computer-based invasions directed atwestern companies and come a year after Internet giant Google andnumerous companies were targeted by hackers traced to China.

That previous incident triggered a highly-charged debate over thecountry's censorship and rigid control of the internet. Googleeventually all but pulled out of China, despite the markets massivegrowth opportunity.

While Google said last year's attack was aimed at its "corporateinfrastructure", the latest incident appears to have relied ontricking individual email users into revealing passwords, based onGoogle's description in its blog post.

"It's important to stress that our internal systems have not beenaffected - these account hijackings were not the result of asecurity problem with gmail itself," Google said.

Google said the perpetrators changed the victims' emailforwarding settings, presumably secretly sending the victims'personal emails to other recipients.