GMail falls foul of phishing attacks

 

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Posted on 6 Oct 2009 at 13:53

Google has confirmed that GMail customers have been hit by phishing attacks, just a day after 10,000 Hotmail accounts were exposed by a similar method.

The details of 20,000 GMail, Yahoo and AOL email accounts, including usernames and passwords, have been posted on the net. Google has confirmed the details are genuine, and claims it is taking action to protect affected accounts.

"We recently became aware of an industry-wide phishing scheme through which hackers gained user credentials for web-based mail accounts including GMail accounts," says Google in a statement.

"As soon as we learned of the attack, we forced password resets on the affected accounts. We will continue to force password resets on additional accounts when we become aware of them," the company adds.

As soon as we learned of the attack, we forced password resets on the affected accounts

As with Microsoft, Google was keen to point out that its security hadn't been breached, but rather that the information had been obtained through "a scam to get users to give away their personal information to hackers".

These phishing attacks rely on people entering their login information into legitimate-looking sites that are actually being run by hackers.

After the attacks on Hotmail, Microsoft claimed that phishing is an "industry-wide problem" and advised customers "to exercise extreme caution when opening unsolicited attachments and links from both known and unknown sources.

"If you believe you’ve been a victim of a phishing scheme, it’s very important that you update your account information and change your password as soon as possible," the company concluded.

Yahoo says it is "investigating the incident".

Author: Stuart Turton