Chinese Cyberspying Targets Stanford Student's Gmail

A Tibetan human rights proponent and Stanford undergrad is the first activist identified as a target of the recent Chinese cyberattack on Google. “That the long arm of Chinese security could reach all the way to my home here at Stanford is something I never would have suspected,” Tenzin Seldon tells the San Jose Mercury News. She adds, " The fact that the Chinese government is intimidated by a 20-year-old is kind of sad .”

For Google, the breach was no laughing matter. The search giant contact Seldon, a regional coordinator of Students for a Free Tibet, when it discovered a Chinese user was logged in to her Gmail account at the same time she was using it. The company took her laptop and ran tests for malware, which turned up nothing. Google surmises a sophisticated self-destructing program was used to gain access to Seldon's account. (More Tenzin Seldon stories.)