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Chinese hackers had months of access to US officials’ Google emails: Expert

Washington, June 3(ANI): Chinese hackers enjoyed months of access to the personal Google emails of senior US officials and human rights activists, according to a US computer security expert.

Google had on Wednesday said that hackers based in China tried to break into hundreds of Google mail accounts. The company later claimed that the hackers’ “goal” was to eavesdrop on the officials “to monitor the content of the users’ emails”.

The first details of the attack emerged in February on the blog of Mila Parkour, a pseudonymous computer security expert who found a “spear phishing” email on the systems of one of her clients, The Telegraph reports.he had alerted Google after which they made their official announcement.

An example described by Parkour appeared to originate from the US State Department and contained link to a document named “Draft US-China Joint tatement”.

In fact, when clicked, the link summoned a facsimile of the Gmail login page.he bogus page asked targets to enter their password, granting the attackers full access to their email account. Google said the attackers then changed settings so that all incoming messages would be forwarded to them.

The security breach was revealed as the Pentagon warned that the US might retaliate with military force against countries that sabotage its computers.

Google said that the latest attack was believed to have been executed from the city of Jinan.

China, however, claims that the hacking is not state-sponsored, said the allegations are “completely unfounded and made with ulterior motives.” (ANI)