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Yahoo E-mail Accounts of Foreign Journalists Hacked in China

As stated by FCCC, the Foreign Correspondent's Club of China, recently, hackers attacked the e-mail accounts of foreign journalists who work in Taiwan and China. Consequently, Yahoo deferred several accounts in the fourth week of March 2010.

In an e-mail to the members, FCCC said that it has confirmed eight such cases wherein the journalists in Taiwan and China suffered from hacked e-mail accounts recently.

Various journalists discovered that they could not access their e-mails starting from March 25, 2010; a freelance journalist, Kathleen McLaughlin, was among them. Her access to the e-mail account was fixed on March 31, 2010, according to the news published by the Reuters on March 31, 2010.

Also, a Beijing-based journalist, Andrew Jacobs said that without any knowledge, his Yahoo Plus account had been established to forward to yet another unknown account. He wrote this in the New York Times.

Another incident was reported by a reporter for the Irish Times, Clifford Coonan. He informed the Chinese news agency that when in the last week of March 2010, he accessed his Yahoo account; he received an error message, as per the news published by the BBC news on March 31, 2010.

Coonan said that what happened and who is behind this is known as no information has been provided by Yahoo. However, it appears that the journalists and academics in China are the prime target, and hence, it's a bit suspicious.

According to a Spokesperson who informed the news agency, Yahoo has neither responded to the questions of FCCC, nor has it informed individual e-mail users the mode in which hackers accessed their accounts.

Moreover, it has been reported that e-mails were hacked along with cyber attacks made on people who look upon sensitive issues by the Chinese government since 2009.

In fact, Symantec, in the last week of March 2010, issued a cyber security report, according to which, China has turned out to be the biggest source of targeted attacks in the world. Malicious e-mails are distributed in small chunks whose main aim is to gain access to important data.

FCCC cautioned the members to reset their e-mail passwords, and suggested them to look for other modes of communication for sensitive businesses or for arranging interviews.

Related article: Yahoo Gets “Yam”med by a Worm

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