Internet users in China are facing a phishing attack — put in place by hackers — when they attempt to access Gmail, according to
a report by Fast Company.
When users visit Gmail.com, they’re redirected to a site that looks exactly the same, but at a different address (
http://124.117.227.201/web/gmail/), where they’re asked to re-enter their login information. Like all phishing attacks, the hackers are interested in gathering Gmail user login information, as well as any other information they can sift out of email accounts.
The server behind the attack originated from Ürümqi in Northwest China, but beyond that it’s unknown who’s behind it. Fast Company points to
one conspiratorial report that speculates state-run ISPs China Telecom and Unicom may be behind the phishing attack, and that it’s meant to make users lose faith in Gmail.
Given Google’s recent spats in China, that explanation may not seem so hard to believe. The company
threatened to pull out of China entirely earlier this year, after it detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” in its Beijing offices. Google remained in the country, but
it stopped censoring searches by forwarding users from its Chinese site (Google.cn) to its Hong Kong site (Google.hk).
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