In a move to further tighten the security in Gmail, Google is launching a security warning notification system on Gmail to alert its users for possible attacks. “Today, we’re taking that a step further for a subset of our users, who we believe may be the target of state-sponsored attacks,” Eric Grosse, Vice President of Security Engineering at Google said. If Google believes that an account is compromised, a security warning will appear above the Gmail account informing the user that state-sponsored attackers might be attempting to access an account without the user’s authorization. Judging from the photo above, you’ll notice the red banner with the notification on it.
Google will then ask the user to either change the account password or enable the two-step verification feature which will require users to input codes sent by Google to their mobile devices upon logging-in to Gmail. Google, however said that the warning doesn’t necessarily mean that an account has been hijacked. It just means that Google believes that an account might be a target of phishing or malware, and that users should take immediate steps to secure their account. “We believe it is our duty to be proactive in notifying users about attacks or potential attacks so that they can take action to protect their information. And we will continue to update these notifications based on the latest information,” Grosse added.