Hackers didn’t tamper with Nigeria’s g-mail accounts, says Google

Google Nigeria has broken the silence and
announced that Nigerian users of the Google
mail accounts have nothing to worry about
following the disturbing hacks that took place
in several Asian countries where several
hundreds of Google email accounts were
broken into by unidentified persons.
Google had in a blog statements earlier in the
month told the world that indeed a hacker had
obtained access to hundreds of Gmail
accounts, including those of senior U.S.
government officials, military personnel,
Chinese political activists and journalists.
There had been no immediate panic from
users in Nigeria following the hacks but
Vanguard Hitech had probed for possible
security breaches on G mail accounts owned by
Nigerians thus provoking these comments that
called for calm from the company.
According to Julie Taylor; Google's press
officer, "It is important to stress that our
internal systems have not been affected by
these account hijackings. It was not also as a
result of a security problem with Gmail itself.
But we believe that being open about these
security issues helps users better protect their
information online." She continued "Google
detected and has disrupted this campaign to
take users' passwords and monitor their
emails. We have notified victims and secured
their accounts. In addition, we have notified
relevant government authorities."
Google said the hacker had attempted to go on
"a campaign to take users' passwords and
monitor their emails, with the perpetrators
apparently using stolen passwords to change
peoples' forwarding and delegating settings."
According to the company, " Through the
strength of our cloud-based security and abuse
detection systems, we were able to detect and
stop the campaign which appears to originate
from Jinan, China, and which affected what
seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of
hundreds of users including senior U.S.
government officials, Chinese political
activists, officials in several Asian countries
(predominantly South Korea), military
personnel and journalists."