Industry-wide phishing attack strikes thousands

The details are still sketchy, but it's clear a major hack attack has been underway. It has targeted Google's Gmail, Yahoo's Mail, Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail and AOL, among other sites. The BBC is describing it a large-scale phishing attack, and it has harvested at least 10,000 passwords from Microsoft's Hotmail alone.

Microsoft said late Monday that it had blocked all hijacked Hotmail accounts and offered users tools if they have lost control of their email. Google said its Gmail was the target of a large-scale phishing campaign, as well.

"We recently became aware of an industry-wide phishing scheme through which hackers gained user credentials for web-based mail accounts including Gmail accounts," a Google spokesperson told the BBC.

The BBC also said it has seen a list of some 20,000 compromised email accounts; the list included accounts from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Comcast and EarthLink. The news agency did not identify the source of the list.

For more on the latest hack attacks:
- check out this Computerworld.com article

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