Google breaks up Gmail spying campaign

scmagazineus.com

Google has identified and disrupted a campaign operating out of eastern China meant to hijack and monitor the Gmail accounts belonging to hundreds of users, the technology giant revealed Wednesday.

Victims included U.S. and Asian government officials -- mostly from South Korea, military members, journalists and Chinese political activists, said Eric Grosse, engineering director of the Google's security team, in a blog post.

The campaign appears to trace back to Jinan, China and involves the theft of user's Gmail passwords, likely through phishing, he said. Google was able to disrupt the campaign, secure the affected accounts and notify the targeted individuals.

"The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users' emails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change peoples' forwarding and delegation settings," Grosse wrote. "Google enables you to forward your emails automatically, as well as grant others access to your account."

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On The Internet, No One Watches The Wiretappers

Note: Heads up, this just in from our friend "Mike"...JDL
forbes.com
When Twitter revealed in January that it had received a Department of Justice order to hand over information on three users associated with WikiLeaks, the real surprise wasn’t that an Internet company had been asked to secretly spill user data for a criminal investigation. It was that, for once, the firm didn’t kept quiet about it.

Chris Soghoian, a privacy researcher at Indiana University and the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, has been following that Twitter case closely as a potentially precedent-shaping test for how and when the government can nab users’ online information. And now he’s released a paper that puts the case in context, outlining just how little Americans are told about the extent of government surveillance on the Internet.

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DOJ To Congress: We Shouldn’t Need A Warrant To Snoop Through Gmail

For years, privacy advocacy groups have been trying to make sure digital data has the same kinds of search and seizure protections that physical documents have. In recent times, even some major companies like Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and AT&T (NYSE: T) have joined together in the Digital Due Process coalition, which wants to modernize the nation’s out-of-date wiretapping laws. Those corporations want law enforcement agents to get a warrant issued by a judge before they are able to tap into sources of data stored in the cloud, such as web email. It’s been an uphill fight—to say the least—and today, the Department of Justice took a position that’s going to make their quest even harder.

According to a report from CNET, a DOJ lawyer told a Senate committee that if cops are required to get a search warrant to tap into email stored online, it could have an “adverse impact” on investigations. “Speed is essential,” he said. “If Congress slows down the process, this would have real-life consequences, particularly where human life is involved.”

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