Google is fighting back against foreign state-sponsored groups who are targeting the accounts of certain Google users. The new alert system does not necessarily mean a users account has been hijacked, rather it provides an indication to users that Google systems have flagged their account because of suspicious activity outside of a users normal access area.
To keep its new system secure Google will not share details about how it works or why they flag certain accounts and not others. According to Eric Grosse, VP Security Engineering:
“You might ask how we know this activity is state-sponsored. We can’t go into the details without giving away information that would be helpful to these bad actors, but our detailed analysis—as well as victim reports—strongly suggest the involvement of states or groups that are state-sponsored.”
The Google security blog recommends that users who receive the attack message immediately change their passwords to a mix of capital and lowercase letters, punctuation marks and numbers that are harder for hackers to crack. The company specifically asks users to avoid dictionary words which can easily be guess with basic brute force hacking programs.
Google is also suggesting that all users add the company’s two-step verification process to their accounts and apply all operating system patches to their computers.
Google is no stranger to foreign attacks from government entities, in 2011 the search giant accused the Chinese government of hacking Gmail accounts in an attempt to suppress political rebels. Google has also claimed in the past that US governmental official’s have had their Gmail accounts targeted by Chinese hackers.
Here is the message you will see when your account is possibly under foreign attack:
