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This week, world’s leading technology company, Google, revealed some state-sponsored hacking and phishing attempts targeting its customers.
The company has been warning users of government-backed hacking attempts for many years and it has sent out a large number of caveats every month.
In a blog post, it was divulged that more than 12,000 notices activated by state-sponsored phishing efforts were sent out to users across several countries in the third quarter of 2019. Google says the number of warnings has remained almost the same as it was in the same period of 2017 and 2018.
The United States was the leading target of these types of attempts in the third quarter of 2019, after Pakistan.
Over 90pc of these attacks involved attempts to persuade users to deliver their account credentials, including two-factor authentication codes, which would let the attacker take control of the targeted account.
The company has been observing the activities of over 270 threat groups that have flung targeted attacks or government-backed campaigns. Their operations have been aimed at objects in more than 50 countries, and their goal was mostly to gather intellect, steal intellectual property, launch damaging attacks, track campaigners and dissenters, or spread false information.
One of these groups is the Russia-linked Sandworm, which previously uploaded or tried to upload numerous malicious Android apps to the Google Play Store. Some of these applications attacked users in South Korea and Ukraine.
As for the propaganda campaigns it has targeted lately, Google mentioned a Russia-linked influence operation aimed at numerous countries in Africa, and a campaign directing at Indonesia’s Papua and West Papua provinces.
