Google warns: special services hunt for accounts of journalists and scientists

Google is committed to keeping its users safe. To this end, the company is developing new methods of protecting accounts from hacking, and also periodically updates its security recommendations. Recently it became known that Google this month sent notifications to a number of scientists and journalists about the likely hacking of their accounts by representatives of the special services.

Such warnings have already received the Nobel laureate and journalist of the New York Times Paul Krugman (Paul Krugman), Stanford professor Michael McFaul (Michael McFaul), GQ journalist Keith Olbermann and other journalists and scientists. Some users who received relevant messages from Google told about it on the net. For example, here and here .

Interestingly, Google has already posted a notification on the start page when a user tries to log in to their account. Such a warning states the following: “Perhaps the security services are trying to steal your password.” Plus, here is a link to the instructions of the company, which tells about how to protect your account.
')
Users who receive a warning report that their account has been protected using two-step authentication, which Google recommends using to almost all of its users. The corporation has begun to notify people about government hackers since 2012 .

A spokesman for the company said that messages at the entrance to the account may appear within a month after an attempt to hack the target account. He also said that the company does not show a warning immediately so that attackers cannot get information about which methods are used to determine the attack being carried out, and information security specialists would have the opportunity to study the progress of the attack of the attackers.


The company Volexity, working in the field of information security, said that the reason for the mass appearance of notifications from Google may be an increase in the level of activity of the Russian hacker group Fancy Bear. This group allegedly attacked some American organizations after the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election. Attack - the usual phishing with the proposal to download an infected document or several documents.

Notices about the attack of special services were sent by Google on November 8-9 to a wide range of users representing the interests of many companies, organizations and their own. So, warnings were received by journalists, scientists, politicians. Tellingly, several people work at the Clinton Foundation.

Google has special services for monitoring the suspicious activity of the accounts of its users. Upon detection of unusual attempts at entry and other activities, such services are reported to the “center”, where an analysis of the situation takes place.

The warning from Gmail contains personalized instructions for setting account security features based on your browser’s settings. After a while, the reminder reappears and can be turned off. If the notification appeared for the third time, it means that Google again detected some suspicious activity around the target account.

Google also recommends performing a step-by-step security check of your account, after which information is displayed on additional measures to protect your data:

• Use of current software (browser, operating system, plug-ins for programs);
• Enable two-step authentication in Gmail;
• Using Google Authenticator;
• Setting up a hardware token in Gmail;
• Install password protector in Chrome;
• Removal of malware.

At the same time, Google itself sometimes takes quite controversial steps , for example, in relation to users who have violated the rules of operation of one of its services. Not so long ago, the company blocked the accounts of all buyers of the Google Pixel smartphone, who decided to resell the device to one of the resellers in the US tax-free state.

Now we know about about 200 users whose accounts have been blocked. And although the accounts were subsequently unblocked, information security specialists remind you: do not keep all your eggs in one basket. It is better to work with several similar services than to depend on a single one.