Cybersecurity is fast becoming personal as well as a national threat as Google warned prominent educators and journalists that hackers have been trying to get into their accounts.
Reports of cyberhacking the accounts of prominent people in education and journalism has been making the rounds on social media. Some of those who have been targeted Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize economist; Michael McFaul, Stanford University professor and a former US diplomat; Jon Lovett, Atlantic magazine writer; Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine columnist; and Julia Ioffe, columnist at Foreign Policy and Politico.
Google issued the warning in form of a banner where the supposed targeted people can see it when they logged in to their email accounts. The banner bears the warning which says Google has detected some hackers backed by the government are trying to steal their passwords. Those who received the warning said their accounts are backed by a two-factor authentication.
Along with the warning, Google also included a linked that advised the account holders how to keep their accounts secure. This is not the first time Google warned its users. In fact, it has been issuing warnings to its users from time to time.
A Google spokesman said the warnings have nothing to do with the hacking attempts that have occurred recently but by events that happened over the past month. He also explained why they delayed in issuing the warnings saying they didn't want the hackers to detect what tools and strategies they use to detect the attacks.
According to reports, if the warning concerns old cyberattacks, it is possible that they are related to the spear phishing campaign in November 8 after Donald Trump's presidential victory. According to security firm Veloxity, the Russian government hackers were behind te attacks.
