There is no respite for Chinese political dissenters, at least not on Gmail. Google, the global giant that offers this email service, has revealed that it has thwarted a large-scale attack on the passwords of hundreds of accounts opened by Asian political activists, journalists but also military and US government officials. The 'hacking' attempt would appear to have started from China, from the city of Jinan, home to a technical reconnaissance office of the Chinese army. Insinuations of political espionage promptly denied by Beijing: “Google's accusations are totally unfounded and hide double motivations. We cannot accept that a hacker attack is linked to China,” said the spokeswoman for the People's Republic's Foreign Ministry.
According to Google, the technique used for the attack would not be very sophisticated, but a trivial phishing attempt: with a fake email, the hacker impersonates a bank or another company known by the user, trying to extract sensitive information . Meanwhile, the White House has announced that the FBI will investigate the matter.
