Google Says Gmail Hacked: Blames China

Just a few hours back, we had Eric Schmidt singing paeans to Apple for their robust security system, and trashing Microsoft in the process. While, both Apple and Google are currently victim of some very sophisticated virus attacks, Google is now facing even a bigger challenge. The search giant later admitted that its mail service, Gmail, has been hacked into.

The attack on Gmail is more intense than regular email hacks. The company, in its official blog, stated that the hacking attempt is more in the nature of phishing attack. Google said that the users who have been affected by this breach have already been notified and its security team is working on the remedial measures. According to the company, the attack is designed to collect users' passwords and to access the data in their emails.

Looks like Google has already traced the origin of the hack attack. Yes, you guessed it right! The attack apparently originated from Jinan in China. Ever since, Google was bundled out of China on search engine censure issues, the company had been blaming China for all sorts of mischief. Cyber warfare is indeed becoming an important issue. The US recently said that the cyber attacks are an act of war and would be dealt accordingly. Somehow it looks like that eventually 'Cyber Attacks' would be for China what WMDs were for Iraq.

Anyways, if you have become the victim of Gmail hacking then there are certain steps you can take. These steps have been recommended by Google and it asks you to use two-factor authentication process, and check your setting for odd forwarding activities.

The incident has once again highlighted the fact that even the biggest companies are not fail-safe when it comes to security. This year, a number of companies are going to offer Cloud storage services, but in the last few months, we have seen higher than average number of security breaches including PlayStation Network incident. These attacks would certainly make us think twice before entrusting our sensitive data to the cloud.