SimplicIT Blog

Google accused China today of malicious attacks on Google’s servers intended to gather information about the Gmail accounts of human rights activists.

Further, Google noted that many other Gmail accounts belonging to human rights activists had been accessed by multiple third parties, suggesting that their passwords had been compromised. Google re-iterated anti-virus, patch management, and safe browsing.

Despite the hoopla, when it comes to Chinese hacking, this is only the tip of the iceberg. A more significantly but less widely published story involves intrusions into the Obama and McCain computer systems during the 2008 general election.

In November 2008 Newsweek published a behind-the-scenes article about the campaigns:

.. Technology experts detected what they initially thought was a computer virus… But by the next day, both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaigns with an ominous warning: “You have a problem way bigger than what you understand,” an agent told Obama’s team. “You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system.”

In 2009, WSJ published comments made by President Obama about the incident.

“What isn’t widely known is that during the general election hackers managed to penetrate our computer systems. Hackers gained access to emails and a range of campaign files, from policy position papers to travel plans.”

The White House and FBI suggested the intrusions were the work of a “foreign entity” likely seeking information on the two sides’ policy positions to use in negotiations with the next administration. And while Russian organized crime is often blamed for malicious cyberattacks, security industry experts widely assumed it was the Chinese government.