Why Was GMail China's Target?  cracked gmail.jpgMikko Hypponen
of F-Secure is a fairly major rock star in the security business
(think somewhere between Ziggy and Bob Marley). Yes, he's a
vendor, but you have to respect his insight and experience.  So
I took it seriously when Mikko said he thinks that there's an
angle to the Aurora attacks of late last year that hasn't gotten
the attention it deserves: The nature of the attacks reinforces
the idea that the attackers were primarily concerned with
espionage against government opponents, and not the usual
industrial espionage and simple criminality you typically find
in the digital underground economy.  Consider the sort of people
we're talking about as victims here: Dissidents, free speech
advocates, non-governmental organizations, and their attorneys.
Knowing that they're frequent targets of government spooks they
like using webmail accounts, particularly GMail and Yahoo! Mail.
Many will use Linux in order to avoid Windows malware which
might reveal their pers