Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Google to warn users being attacked by governments

In a release that raises more questions than answers, Google announced on Wednesday that it will begin notifying users who may be the target of state-sponsored attacks.

“You might ask how we know this activity is state-sponsored. We can’t go into the details without giving away information that would be helpful to these bad actors, but our detailed analysis—as well as victim reports—strongly suggest the involvement of states or groups that are state-sponsored,” according to Eric Grosse, vice-president of security engineering at Google.

The notice was posted to the company’s blog on Wednesday. Grosse could not be reached to provide further details.

“We believe it is our duty to be proactive in notifying users about attacks or potential attacks so that they can take action to protect their information. And we will continue to update these notifications based on the latest information,” Grosse wrote.

Google is constantly on the lookout for malicious activity on its systems, in particular attempts by third parties to log into accounts without authorization.

“When we have specific intelligence—either directly from users or from our own monitoring efforts—we show clear warning signs and put in place extra roadblocks to thwart these bad actors.

Today, we’re taking that a step further for a subset of our users, who we believe may be the target of state-sponsored attacks,” according to the posting.

A copy of the warning is posted to the blog.

A Canadian spokesman for Google said the names of the countries involved are not being released. He wouldn’t say whether any Google accounts have been compromised, only that attempts have been made to compromise them.

“We’re seeing the threat but we’re not seeing something that would make us feel it is widespread, but we are taking a proactive approach,” said Aaron Brindle.

“The objective of the attack is to hijack the account. What is done with it – a variety of nefarious things can spiral out from that.”

He would not say whether Canadian accounts were involved.

“Should Canadians worry about this? I think all Internet users should be concerned and aware of the security of their accounts. Canadians, like all citizens of the Internet, should beware of the best practices when it comes to security.”

Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Francine Kopun

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