Google: Iranian Gmail users targeted in pre-election hacking campaign
Tens of thousands of Gmail accounts belonging to Iranian users
have been targeted in an extensive hacking campaign in the weeks
leading up to the country's closely watched presidential elections
on June 14, Google Inc said on June 12, Reuters reported.
The U.S. Internet company, which described the attacks as broad
"email-based phishing" attempts seeking to trick unsuspecting Gmail
users into giving up their user names and passwords, said they
originated in Iran and appeared to be "politically motivated in
connection with the Iranian presidential election on Friday."
On June 14, Iranians will go to over 66,000 polling stations across
the country to cast their votes for the 6 active presidential
candidates.
Over 420 journalists from 39 countries will be covering the
presidential elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran, according
to country's Public Relations and Information Center of Ministry of
Culture.
Such countries as Azerbaijan, Germany, Australia, Russia, Japan,
UK, UAE, France, Turkey, Iraq, Ukraine, USA, Syria, China will be
covering the elections in Iran.
Google said it has a policy to alert users to "state-sponsored
attacks and other suspicious activity," but did not identify the
perpetrators beyond saying that it appeared to be the same group
behind a Gmail hacking campaign in 2011 involving fraudulent
digital certificates.
The most recent phishing campaigns began almost three weeks ago,
Google said.
The "timing and targeting of the campaigns" suggested a connection
to the election, Google said without elaborating.
On its security blog on Wednesday, the company posted a screenshot
of a phishing email purporting to be from Google
administrators.
The email, sent from the account "[email protected],"
contained a link to a fake sign-in page that asked for the user's
Gmail credentials.
"Protecting our users' accounts is one of our top priorities, so we
notify targets of state-sponsored attacks and other suspicious
activity, and we take other appropriate actions to limit the impact
of these attacks on our users," Google said.
In 2011, a young Iranian student who claimed credit for hacking
Gmail accounts belonging to anti-government dissidents told the
international press that he acted out of patriotism but denied any
connection to the Iranian government.