Google on Wednesday said that it has been battling what appeared to be politically targeted efforts to steal the passwords of tens of thousands of account holders in Iran.
For nearly three weeks, California-based Google has been fighting “phishing” email messages crafted to trick recipients into clicking on links leading to phony account maintenance web pages that steal user names and passwords.
The ruse was “aimed at compromising the accounts owned by tens of thousands of Iranian users,” Grosse said.
There were indications that the same culprits were involved in a cyberattack targeting Iranians about two years ago, according to Google.
Google policy is to notify targets of state-sponsored attacks or other suspicious activity, along with working internally to thwart hackers, according to Grosse.
His suggestions included opting for two-factor verification that requires information other than a password to get into an account and checking that website addresses are legitimate.
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