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upstart writes:

Google warns 14,000 Gmail users targeted by Russian hackers:

Google has warned about 14,000 of its users about being targeted in a state-sponsored phishing campaign from APT28, a threat group that has been linked to Russia.

The campaign was detected in late September and accounts for a larger than usual batch of Government-Backed Attack notifications that Google sends to targeted users every month.

[...] Shane Huntley, who is at the helm of Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) that responds to government-backed hacking, notes that the higher-than-usual number of alerts this month comes from “from a small number of widely targeted campaigns which were blocked.”

The campaign from APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, lead to a larger number of warnings for Gmail users across various industries.

In a statement sent by a Google spokesperson, Huntley says that Fancy Bear’s phishing campaign accounts for 86% of all the batch warnings delivered this month.

[...] “So why do we do these government warnings then? The warning really mostly tells people you are a potential target for the next attack so, now may be a good time to take some security actions” - Shane Huntley

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