‘State sponsored’ hackers of journalists identified by their ingenuity, deputy minister says

Published on Monday, 25 February 2013 16:58

Google used the phrase “state sponsored” to describe certain hacking attempts on the accounts of journalists when the hacking techniques were new, Deputy Minister for Ministry of Information Ye Htut quoted a Google executive as saying.  

The deputy minister made the comments on Facebook, saying they were based on a discussion with Mike Orgill Google’s country lead fir public policy and government relations.

“After we discussed media development, I asked him why Google used ‘state sponsored’ in email alerts [to journalists] and how it found information of possible attacks,” Ye Htut wrote.

“He explained that if the hackers use techniques to hack an email address that have not been used by most hackers, then they concluded that the techniques were used by state-sponsored hackers. It’s the same for the alerts sent to the email addresses,” the deputy minister said.

Google recently sent email alerts about possible attacks by state sponsored hackers on Gmail accounts of Myanmar journalists, raising concerns about media rights here.

The United States-based Committee to Protect Journalists said state-sponsored attacks on journalists’ email accounts raised new questions about Myanmar’s media-reform process.