Indian Google Accounts Targeted By Govt-Backed Cyber Attacks, Says Google Report
Google plans to release this information on a quarterly basis as a bulletin
Government-backed cyber attackers are targeting Google user accounts, the technology giant revealed in a recent blog post.
In India, Google notified around 51 to 100 users of their accounts being targeted by ¡°state sponsored¡± attackers in April.
The release, however, did not pinpoint the government that backed these cyber attacks. So whether it is the Indian government targeting the devices or some other, is not known. Apart from the targeted devices in India, similar warnings were sent out to 1,755 Google account users across the world in April.
A similar warning was issued by Google back in November last year, when it informed around 500 Indians of a ¡°government backed¡± phishing attack against them between July and September 2019.
Going forward, Google plans to release this information on a quarterly basis as a bulletin.
Last year, Google¡¯s Threat Analysis Group also terminated 3 advertising accounts, 1 AdSense account, and 11 YouTube channels. The tech behemoth claimed in its post that the account termination was a part of their actions against a coordinated influence operation linked to India.
¡°Some are looking to collect intelligence or steal intellectual property; others are targeting dissidents or activists, or attempting to engage in coordinated influence operations and disinformation campaigns,¡± the post mentions about the cyber attacks detected by it.
Since March, the company has ramped up the drive to remove such account from its video platform YouTube. ¡°We¡¯ve removed more than a thousand YouTube channels that we believe to be part of a large campaign and that were behaving in a coordinated manner,¡± the post says.
Similar phishing attacks originating from India were also detected by Google. In these attacks, the attackers used gmail accounts to send out mails that replicated the look and feel of that of WHO but were just trying to grab users¡¯ login credentials.