Chinese Human Rights Activists’ Gmail Accounts Hacked

After Google announced that he had suffered from highly sophisticated cyber attacks in the month of December to gain control of its e-mail service Gmail, a large number of human activists strongly agitated against the attacks.

Teng Biao, Law Professor at the University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, said that his e-mail account had been compromised, as reported by Telegraph on January 15, 2010., Teng Biao, who is also a human rights lawyer, revealed that many of his friends informed him about receiving of entrapment e-mails from his e-mail address - against.teng@gmail.com, which pointed to the gravity of situation.

These e-mails contained various subject lines for instance - "contribute an article," "inside story" or "democratic principles" along with virus infested attachments.

Ai Weiwei, known worldwide (particularly in the West) for helping in the design of Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing, said that two of his Gmail accounts had been compromised by an unknown person who had read and imitated his e-mails, as reported by Telegraph on January 15, 2010.

Apart from this, Tibet human rights activist Tenzin Seldon also reported the hacking of his e-mail accounts in the cyber attacks, as reported by SFGate on January 15, 2010.

She disclosed that on January 7, 2010 David Drummond, Google Chief Legal Officer, contacted her to inform that her Google account had been accessed by someone from a Chinese IP address near the end of 2009, as reported by SFGate on January 15, 2010. After taking her permission, Google scanned her laptop to detect viruses and malicious software.

Nothing was found on the laptop but that was not surprising. Industry sources state that a particular type of malware was used by hackers in these attacks. The malware was very sophisticated in nature as it destructed itself after executing the task. In the present case, it retrieved e-mail password.

According to the security experts, the task or impact of these cyber attacks has not over yet. McAfee states that the malicious code has been made public on Net, which could result in the emergence of more copycat attacks.

Related article: Chinese Hackers Threatening Korean Game Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 1/22/2010