However, not to phish-shame any victims, but there was a major clue hiding in plain sight. So, all in all, this was a pretty effective scam. (And here’s a cyber-security tip for anyone using Google: check your permissions settings and disable any apps that you don’t recognize.) In a worst-case scenario, the attacker could use the inbox contents to go after individuals’ bank accounts, even within that narrow window of access.Īnyone who clicked on the link was advised to go to their Google settings page to revoke permission that they had inadvertently granted to the hacker.
GMAIL HACK HHHHHH.MAILINATOR INSTALL
However, an hour is a lot of time to steal information and install malicious code.
In their statement, Google said that they stopped the attack within about an hour of its discovery, saving thousands more people from falling victim. It’s difficult at this point to say what the overall effect of this attack will be. To make matters worse, the worm also sent itself out to all of the affected users’ contacts - Gmail or otherwise - reproducing itself hundreds of times any time a single user fell for it. When users clicked it and logged on, the hacker gained access to their Gmail credentials, thereby getting the keys to the kingdom for a user’s entire online life - and enabling the virus to replicate itself.
The worm - which arrived in users’ inboxes posing as an email from a trusted contact - asked users to check out an attached “Google Docs” file. The actual phishing email has been described as more sophisticated than the typical phishing email, in part, because it looked pretty authentic, if not “quite right.” But the way it worked on Google’s server was also pretty advanced. By evening, every news network had picked it up and was running with the story. The attack, perpetrated by an unknown hacker, targeted about a million users (or as Google put it in their statement, “fewer than 0.1 percent of Gmail users”). Last Tuesday, it seemed like the entire Internet lit up over a Gmail/Google Docs phishing scam that was whirling around the webosphere.
0 kommentar(er)
