Gmail Accounts Hacked In China

Going by the most recent information forwarded by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China, the Gmail accounts of some of the foreign correspondents have been attacked by hackers, and the emails of the hijacked accounts have been forwarded to a mysterious address.

Noting that writers “in a few bureaus in Beijing” have discovered that their Gmail correspondence has being forwarded to a stranger’s address, the association of journalists cautioned its members thus: “We remind all members that journalists in China have been particular targets of hacker attacks in the last two years.”

The association issued an advisory to its members about how to confirm whether or not their Gmail had been compromised. In addition, it also urged the members to “run virus checks regularly” and to be “very careful” about the links they click on; the email attachments they open.

The news about the hijacking of the Gmail accounts of foreign correspondents in China comes close on the heels of Google’s last week threat of pulling out of China, due to hacking of Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, has clarified in an official blog post that an investigation revealed that only two Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were probably accessed, with the hacking being “limited to account information, rather than the content of e-mails themselves.”