Google reveals politically motivated attacks on users

INTERNET SERVICES GIANT Google has warned of politically motivated attacks against its users.

The company said that it noticed a number of "highly targeted" attacks on its users, particularly activists. It did not specify who was attacked or who might be behind the attacks.

A publicly known MHTML vulnerability was used to launch the attacks. An exploit for this vulnerability was published in January that allows hackers to launch attacks on users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser.

Google has attempted to limit the damage by deploying a series of server-side defences, but this is only a temporary solution while the company works closely with Microsoft to close the gaping hole in Internet Explorer.

Microsoft has a Fixit tool available that helps lower the chances of an attack being successful, but it doesn't entirely address the problem. The simplest way to avoid such attacks at present is to use an alternative web browser, such as Firefox or Chrome. That's just good advice generally.

Google said similar attacks were launched against a "popular social site", but it did not name which one. µ