Google Warning Gmail Users About State-Sponsored Attacks 69
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Soulskill
from the state-of-distributed-denial dept.
from the state-of-distributed-denial dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "Google, whose users have been frequent targets of suspected attacks by foreign governments, is deploying a new warning system for users who may be victims of those kinds of attacks. The new system is in addition to existing warnings that Google will show Gmail users when their accounts may have been accessed by attackers. Gmail users have been on the receiving end of a number of known attacks, including the infamous Google Aurora attack that has been blamed on China. Part of that operation was aimed at a specific subset of Gmail users, including Chinese dissidents and journalists. Now, Google says it will warn users about exactly that kind of activity."
so what about NSA accesses? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of two things are true:
1) Google never ever receives any requests for information from the NSA;
2) What Google actually means is that it will warn Gmail users about state-sponsored "attacks" from countries the US isn't on perfect terms with.
It's one thing to have corporations battling with government for control. It's quite another when one information-gathering corporation has become so big that it's playing its own overt part in the propaganda war.
Google is doing a good thing - mostly (Score:5, Interesting)
We can argue the details of security from now to doomsday. It's a good thing that Google is doing this. Except it's of limited value. As has been pointed out in reference to the Flame attack, State sponsored hacking is very hard to detect. Google might be able to detect some, but how many? And when does Google encounter a conflict of interest? What happens then, and will we know? This is one reason I like the existence of things like Bing and Yahoo Axis, I get to spread things around. No, it's not a cure all and I'm aware that I still can be tracked, but I am raising the price (effort, etc) needed to get things on me.
We're back to the price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance. Some things don't change in the digital world. Politics didn't, Sex did. Go figure.
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