Expeditious Recovery of Google Docs from Phishing attack
Google wasted no time to mitigate a major fast spreading phishing attack which snuck into the google’ s gmail and docs last Wednesday. The attack was planned to snaffle users’ personal information like login IDs and passwords of millions of users. Google came up with security measure which will prompt an error/warning message whenever a user clicks on any malicious link.
In a post on the G Suite Updates blog titled, “ Making email safer with anti-phishing security checks in Gmail on Android,” Google has promised to launch a new security feature which will help the user to find out the unlawful sites that the user tries to reveal the personal information.
Many credible sources have stated that Google was able to find a solution for the attack within an hour of initial reports. The attack just lasted for a few minutes.
Researchers from Talos, Cisco’ s threat intelligence organization, wrote that the attackers focused on requesting specific permissions to " Read, send, delete, and manage" email and contacts instead of just acquiring the victim' s Google username and password or drop some kind of malware.
The immediate and easy solution for these kinds of attack is to change the password and revoke access to the fraudulent " Google Docs" app in the Google Account settings. Although Google has come up quick measures to sort the issue, finding out appropriate security measures for Gmail' s apps on iOS and the web is much needed.
Even though Google responded quickly on the same day the phishing happened, more than a million users were still affected so really, everyone is on their own in some way while dealing with these scams. Remember — anyone can be the subject of hacking so don't be embarrassed or discouraged. Instead, educate yourself on how phishing works and what you can do to prevent further attacks.
However, just because you got rid of that pesky hack doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. Here are some more tips on how you can spot future suspicious schemes and "phish-y" emails.