Google contacts Iranian users to secure Gmail accounts

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/090911-google-contacts-iranian-users-to-250653.html

By John Ribeiro
IDG News Service
September 09, 2011

Google is directly contacting users in Iran, who may have been 
compromised by a rogue SSL certificate, to recommend measures to secure 
their accounts.

While Google's internal systems were not compromised, it is directly 
contacting possibly affected users and providing information on securing 
their accounts because its top priority is to protect the privacy and 
security of its users, Eric Grosse, vice president of security 
engineering, said in a blog post late Thursday.

Close to 300,000 unique IP addresses from Iran requested access to 
google.com using a rogue certificate issued by Dutch digital certificate 
authority DigiNotar, between Aug. 4 and Aug. 29, according to an interim 
report by security firm, Fox-IT, released on Monday.

The list of IP addresses would be handed over to Google who can inform 
users that their e-mail may have been intercepted during this period, 
Fox-IT said.

[...]


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