Google warns of user names theft in Iran

SAN FRANCISCO, Thursday

Google says it has been battling what appeared to be politically targeted efforts to steal the user names and passwords of tens of thousands of account holders in Iran.

“The timing and targeting of the campaigns suggest that the attacks are politically motivated in connection with the Iranian presidential election on Friday,” Google vice-president of security engineering Eric Grosse said in a blog post on Wednesday.

“These campaigns, which originate from within Iran, represent a significant jump in the overall volume of phishing activity in the region.”

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.

Mr Grosse said the ruse was “aimed at compromising the accounts owned by tens of thousands of Iranian users.”

There were indications the same culprits were involved in a cyber attack targeting Iranians about two years ago, according to Google.

Phising technique

“In this case, the phishing technique we detected is more routine; users receive an email containing a link to a web page that purports to provide a way to perform account maintenance,” Grosse said.

“If a user clicks the link, they see a fake Google sign-in page that will steal their username and password.” (AFP)