Foreign Journalists in Beijing Hit by E-Mail Hackers

From the NYT:

At least two foreign journalists living in Beijing have had their Google e-mail accounts hacked, a journalists’ advocacy group in China said Monday. The hackers changed settings so that all Gmail messages would be forwarded to unfamiliar addresses.

The journalists apparently discovered that their accounts had been hacked after Google announced last week that hackers had attempted sophisticated attacks on its security infrastructure. The attacks were traced to mainland China. Google also said that two Gmail accounts had been compromised and, separately, that dozens of people pressing for human rights in China had had their e-mail accounts hacked. In retaliation, Google had said it would talk to the Chinese government about ceasing the practice of self-censorship of its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, and that the search company could close down or curtail its operations in China.

The two foreign journalists recently victimized by hackers were among a large number of Gmail users in China who checked their accounts after Google’s announcement and discovered that their accounts had been compromised. In many of those cases, it was unclear exactly when the hackers had broken into the accounts. The attacks are separate from those that were aimed weeks ago at the security infrastructure of Google and more than 30 other companies and entities, most of them based in Silicon Valley, California… “We remind all members that journalists in China have been particular targets of hacker attacks in the last two years,” the journalists’ advocacy group, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, said in its announcement of the recent attacks on the Gmail accounts.

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