Gujarat police plan to question Google over safeguards after uncovering 513,847 fake Gmail accounts and passwords allegedly used since 2022 to send hoax bomb threats to government offices, Reuters reported Tuesday citing a senior cybercrime official.
Police arrested two people after breaking up the network, which they said sent an email bomb threat to the Gujarat government on Sept. 10, days before the BRICS summit in New Delhi. One of those arrested was in contact with a buyer in Bangladesh who purchased batches of the accounts and paid partly in cryptocurrency, Reuters reported.
Police also found that each fraudulent account used two-factor authentication, raising questions about how the network bypassed Google's safeguards.
Police plan to formally designate Google, owned by Alphabet, as a subject of the investigation and ask it to make policy changes, Reuters said.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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