Do you have a Gmail account? Do you think your PC security is enough to sustain attacks by a nation-state? Last week, Google warned its email service users were under “state-sponsored attacks” aimed to hijack Gmail accounts. Attacked users saw a warning at the top of their Gmail inbox saying “state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer”. Make sure that, your Gmail account is safe.
In separate missives, Microsoft and Google warned users about the Internet Explorer zero day vulnerability hackers are using to break into GMail accounts. In other words, your Gmail accounts could be compromised or hacked by exploiting IE’s zero day vulnerability. Currently unpatched IE browsers exposes Windows users to remote code execution attacks with little or no user action.
But, how Gmail account could be compromised or more specifically “hacked”? Well, here Microsoft’s explains about the issue:
“The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted webpage using Internet Explorer. An attacker would have no way to force users to visit such a website. Instead, an attacker would have to convince users to visit the website, typically by getting them to click a link in an email message or Instant Messenger message that takes them to the attacker’s website. The vulnerability affects all supported releases of Microsoft Windows, and all supported editions of Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007. The vulnerability exists when MSXML attempts to access an object in memory that has not been initialized, which may corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the logged-on user.”
Be noted that cyber spies are taking advantage of an unpatched, zero-day flaw in Windows XP or later to run malicious code on the user’s computer. The code is planted when the user visits a poisoned website using any version of Internet Explorer. The exploit also works through Microsoft Office documents.
Google security engineer Andrew Lyons wrote in the company’s security blog “Today Microsoft issued a Security Advisory describing a vulnerability in the Microsoft XML component. We discovered this vulnerability – which is leveraged via an uninitialized variable – being actively exploited in the wild for targeted attacks.” He also mentioned that Google reported the vulnerability to Microsoft on May 30 and that the two companies have been working on the problem since.
Regarding the issue, a Microsoft’s security advisory recommended that until the company gets the final fix out, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office users immediately install an intermediate fix, which can be downloaded from Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 2719615 with instructions from.
Be careful, Guys. It’s all about safety. So, before clicking on a link found in your Gmail account, think twice. For more about it, you can visit Naked Security. You can find also “How to stop your Gmail account being hacked” in this article.
Source : Naked Security
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