Gmail Attacked by Phishers after Outage

Gmail had a recent outage on February 24, 2009 where the service was unreachable for about two hours and was then attacked by phishers afterwards.

Reports have confirmed that right after the Gmail outage issue was resolved by Google Inc. a few days ago, users of the hosted e-mail service’s instant messaging tool were hit with a phishing attack.

Sophos’ Graham Cluley posted a blog post about the attack spreading through the Gmail’s Google Talk chat system. The phishing came about through an instant message sent to Gmail users asking them to “Check out this video” accompanied by a TinyURL link leading users to a phishing web site called ViddyHo. The ViddyHo phishing site was one designed to ask users for their Gmail usernames and passwords.

Cluley wrote on his blog post, “The hackers behind ViddyHo could use the credentials they have stolen via their site to break into accounts, grab identity information and impact your wallet.” Essentially when a hacker obtains your Gmail password he or she could access all of your email information including contents and any type of correspondence that could actually lead to identity theft. Since the attack the TinyURL has blacklisted the ViddyHo site so that it is no longer operational.

Security researchers including Graham Cluley have advised those who may have fallen for this scan to update their passwords immediately. A Google spokesman also noted that users should update their Gmail security questionnaire. These are good initial steps to take regardless if you fell for the phishing attack or not.

As of now Google is still working with its engineers to identify the cause of the outage. It is obvious that the outage disrupted many people through the working day and Google ultimately apologizes. As far as the phishing attack, it may have been an opportunity for the attackers that opened up and they just took advantage of the situation where they could phish customers right after an outage.

Attacks like these are on the increase and it may be very unfortunate that we expect to see more attacks like this in the future. Where you effected by the outage? Did you get a phishing message?