

Analysts say attack on Google is part of widespread spying effort - araneae
http://www.macworld.co.uk/digitallifestyle/news/index.cfm?newsid=28293

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lt
_Google's security team eventually managed to gain access to a server that was
used to control the hacked systems, and discovered that it was not the only
company to be hit._

This appears to be new and interesting information.

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anc2020
If it was government, why would they risk hacking more than one company from
the same machine?

Edit: Seems more likely that the anti-hack claim is bs, as other comments are
suggesting Google employees did the hacking from within the office. This would
suggest the attacks against the other companies were on Google-run apps used
by those companies.

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dminor
If you go to Nart Villeneuve's blog <http://www.nartv.org/>, which Google's
blog post linked to, he's got a cool pdf on tracking GhostNet (Chinese
government cyber-espionage network). The command and control servers that were
discovered in earlier attacks do in fact operate this way.

In tracking Chinese infiltration of the Tibetan movement, they discovered
compromises in various embassies and other organizations in countries all over
the world.

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CWuestefeld
This is interesting:

 _they did manage to get some "account information (such as the date the
account was created) and subject line."

That's because they apparently were able to access a system used to help
Google comply with search warrants_

This implies that Google handles gov't requests for information through a
filtered system that can only access meta-data. If this is true, I appreciate
that protection.

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araneae
This quote is awesome:

"Right before Christmas, it was, 'Holy s __*, this malware is accessing the
internal intercept [systems],'"

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jacquesm
I think that should give a large number of Gmail users food for thought.

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sern
It sounds more like a private version of Google Dashboard, which indeed only
shows subject lines as the hackers apparently managed to obtain.

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jeromec
Could you change the original title's construction? It currently suggests
Google initiated an attack.

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genieyclo
It _does_ say "attack __on__ Google"...

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jeromec
Awesome. It looks like a mod here changed the title for HN. The original
article has a misleading title reading "China: Google attack part of
widespread spying effort".

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spo0nman
I just missed reading "attack on" for a second and was shocked!

