Google Faces India Scrutiny Over 500,000 Fake Gmail Accounts
Gujarat Police plans to question Google after investigators uncovered credentials for more than half a million accounts in a probe into hoax bomb threats.
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Indian police plan to question Google after breaking up a network that allegedly created and managed more than 500,000 fake Gmail accounts used to send hoax bomb threats to government offices, Reuters reported.
Gujarat Police arrested two men in Bihar and Jharkhand and recovered a list of 513,847 email IDs and passwords that investigators say was intended for threatening emails and other cybercrime.
Vivek Bheda, a senior Gujarat cybercrime official, told Reuters the scale of the operation was unprecedented and said Google would soon be formally brought into the investigation.
“We will write to Google, ask them to make some policy changes so safeguards cannot be bypassed,” Bheda said.
The investigation began after Gujarat’s Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Department received a bomb threat on September 10 targeting the Chief Minister’s Office, state assembly and others, days before the BRICS summit in New Delhi. Police said the email also threatened countries supporting India during the summit.
Investigators traced the email to Bhagalpur in Bihar and arrested Roshan Kumar Bhumihar. Police later arrested Gulshan Kumar Singh in Deoghar, Jharkhand, whom they allege supplied the email account and maintained the larger database.
Police said the suspects had shared account credentials with associates in Bangladesh and received some payments through cryptocurrency wallets.
Investigators are also examining how such a large number of accounts could be created and operated with two-factor authentication enabled. Bheda said the scale of the accounts uncovered was unprecedented.
The case follows separate scrutiny of Google’s Firebase platform. Indian authorities last month ordered hundreds of Firebase accounts removed after detecting their use in banking scams and malicious websites.
