Your account is under attack, Google tells prominent journalists and professors

Google has raised a red flag to prominent journalists, professors and scientists with regards to their accounts being under state-sponsored attack. If the multiple reports circulating online are to be believed, then the instances have increased in the past 24 hours, though Google is known to send such warnings since 2012. The list of people ( via Arstechnica) includes Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize winning New York Times columnist, Michael McFaul who is a Standford University professor and also a former US diplomat, Keith Olbermann of GQ, Foreign Policy columnist Julia Ioffe, YNew York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, among others. https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/801435745760186368 Slowly, many other have started taking to Twitter to reveal the warning. The warning reads: “Google may have detected government-backed attackers trying to steal your password.” https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/801428101196640256 https://twitter.com/AkinUnver/status/801432108791164928 “The warning may be related to a spear-fishing campaign, tied by a security company to the Russian government, that was started soon after Donald Trump won the US presidential election,” Neowin report points out. Many others believe that Trump is doing exactly what he had planned and cracking down on what he believes is dishonest media. Google is asking these users to further strengthen their account security with stronger passwords and two-factor authentication. The report, citing Google spokesperson, adds that the recent warnings could be due to the hacking attacks that took place last month. The report adds that Google doesn’t turn on the warning signal instantly as it could alert the attackers of the detection method.