Foreign Journalists In China Are Latest Email Hacking Victims

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, an association based in Beijing comprised of journalists representing non-Chinese media, has issued an alert because some of its members have reportedly had their email accounts hacked.

A statement posted on the FCCC’s website states: “Three Beijing-based journalists have reported receiving emails containing malware from an address that initially appeared to come from the Shanghai Expo’s media affairs office. The email, which was not sent by the Expo office, may be targeting correspondents who registered to cover the event.”

Other media reports that Yahoo accounts used by foreign journalists in China have been the target of the latest hacking attempts, with one reported incident where a journalist’s Yahoo email account was hacked and messages were silently redirected to an unknown email address.

This latest salvo of protests from foreign media comes a couple months after American search engine Google first revealed that some of its Gmail accounts had been compromised in attacks the company claimed were emanating from locations inside China.