Jane Edwards
Shane Huntley, head of threat analysis group at Google, wrote in a blog post published Tuesday that Google sent over 12K notifications between July and September to warn users across 149 countries that they were targeted by government-backed threat actors.
Huntley noted that attackers targeted more than 90 percent of those users through “credential phishing emails“ to gain access to users“™ Google accounts.
He said political campaigns, journalists and other high-risk users are encouraged to sign up for Google“™s Advanced Protection Program to protect accounts from phishing and other threats.
Huntley also wrote about disinformation campaigns and his group“™s termination of associated Google accounts and YouTube channels to counter such campaigns. One of the campaigns he cited is Russia-backed influence operations group that uses fake news outlets to promote Russian interests in several countries in Africa, including Madagascar, Sudan, South Africa and the Central African Republic.
