Google Hack Raises Serious Concerns, US Says

A coordinated hacking campaign targeting Google, Adobe Systems and more than 30 other companies raises serious concerns, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday.

In a statement released late Tuesday night, Clinton said that the U.S. government is taking the attack - which Google said came from China - very seriously. "We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions," she said. "We look to the Chinese government for an explanation."

Sources familiar with the situation say that more than 30 U.S. companies, including Adobe Systems, were hit by this targeted attack, which Google first discovered in mid-December. Using an attack that exploited an unpatched bug in widely used software, the attackers were able to gain footholds in these companies and siphon out valuable intellectual property.

In Google's case the attackers also gained access information about the e-mail accounts of Chinese dissidents.

While attacks of this nature have hit the military, federal agencies, and government contractors in the past, Google is the first technology company to come forward and acknowledge it has been hit.

Read the full story -here-

In related news, Google threatened to quit China, the world's biggest Internet market, warning it would no longer tolerate strict censorship of its Google.cn search engine.

• Dropbox breach exposes customer credentials, authentication data
• Google: Passkey authentications top 1 billion across 400 million accounts
• FTC fines Razer for misrepresenting COVID masks as N95s
• FCC fines Verizon, AT&T other major carriers nearly $200 million for sharing customer data
• Federal regulators accuse Amazon executives of deleting messages
• FCC restores net neutrality rules