International Journalists GMail Account Hacked in China, China Against Human Right !

The independent Chinese magazine Caixin has said that unidentified hackers broke into the private Gmail account of one of its investigative reporters following the publication of articles that accused local government officials of taking part in child-trafficking.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China sent an e-mail Monday to its members warning that reporters in at least two news bureaus in Beijing said their Gmail accounts had been broken into, with their e-mails surreptitiously forwarded to unfamiliar accounts.

The Caixin reporter, Zhao Hejuan, recently contributed to a series of investigative reports on child-trafficking, and the apparent complicity of officials in Hunan Province’s Longhui County. Last week, she began to suspect that someone was accessing her e-mail.

As the magazine explained in a statement on Friday:

Zhao learned of the attacks July 21 after receiving a Gmail security alert. Caixin’s I.T. department later uncovered evidence that the hacks into Zhao’s account went as far back as July 19. Based on Gmail’s I.P. history, the hackers had logged on to Zhao’s Gmail account every day since July 19. Zhao and Caixin’s legal affairs consultant reported the incident to district police in Beijing on July 22.

The news comes just one week after Google said it had been targeted by recent cyberattacks aimed at accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The U.S. search giant cited the attacks as one reason it has decided to stop censoring its Chinese search engine and may ultimately close its China offices, a threat China has dismissed.

Google spokesperson Kay Oberbeck said :

“These highly sophisticated attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered — as well as attempts over the past year to limit free speech on the web even further - have led us to conclude that we are no longer comfortable censoring results in China and that we must take a new approach in China,”

Google Also Said that:

 "hackers were only able to view account information and subject headers of emails, and that only two email accounts were compromised, the company has nevertheless increased security for all Gmail users."  

However, A final report on the investigation has yet to be released, and the magazine appears to be standing by its reporting, although it has not published any reply to Mr. Zeng’s statement.

The first reported incident of e-mail hacking against Caixin occurred several days after Mr. Zeng’s comments.