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Google Uncovers China-Based Password Collection Campaign
D H NG writes "Google announced that it recently uncovered a campaign to collect users' passwords. The campaign, apparently originating from China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior US government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists. Google said it detected and has disrupted this campaign and has notified victims and secured their accounts, as well as notified the relevant government authorities."
it isn't a data breach, Google has uncovered a campaign to steal passwords. Well done Google.
I think this falls under that lovely "espionage" blanket. You know the "other guys" are doing it, they know that you are doing it. But everyone pretends like it isn't going on and no-one bats an eyelid in public. However, behind closed doors, this sort of action is driving yet another wedge into the relationship - but at the same time also driving more funding into your own budgets for doing a similar thing to the "other guys" yet again.
My guess is that the fallout of this will be that there will be a project launched with some funny nondescript name that tries to get similar intel on the Chinese. They will likely get wind of it, but be unable to do anything about it as there will never be undeniable proof of the point of origin.
This sort of thing went on for decades (and still does) with the US/Russians, the middle east and just about every European country. It just (mainly) never sees the light of day. The Chinese seem to be getting caught more of late though - which can mean that either they are pretty poor at it compared to the rest (dubious) or their program is a whole heck of a lot bigger and more ambitious than the other players in the game - which I think is much much more likely.
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I kind of wonder how China's great firewall plays into plausible deniability for these things.
For example if China blocks civilian access to x service, and we see hacking attempts to x service originating from China, shouldn't there be a pretty good explanation?