<p>Thousands of Gmail account users in Iran have been targeted in phishing attacks intended to influence the country's national election, Google announced.</p><p>The attacks originated inside Iran and have been occurring for about three weeks, Eric Grosse, vice president of Google security engineering, wrote on the company's blog on Wednesday.</p><p>"These campaigns, which originate from within Iran, represent a significant jump in the overall volume of phishing activity in the region," Grosse said. "The timing and targeting of the campaigns suggest that the attacks are politically motivated in connection with the Iranian presidential election on Friday.</p><p>Grosse wrote that the phishing attacks appear to be conducted by the same group that used SSL certificates to conduct attacks in Iran in 2011 using a fraudulent Google certificate obtained after hacking into Dutch certificate authority DigiNotar.</p><p><a href="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/iran-hack-election/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/13/iranian-election-hackers-target-gmail-accounts">Gmail accounts in Iran hacked, says Google</a> (The Guardian)</p><p><a href="http://beta.dawn.com/news/1017981/iranian-gmail-users-targeted-in-pre-election-hacking-campaign-google">Iranian Gmail users targeted in pre-election hacking campaign: Google</a> (DAWN.com)</p><p><a href="http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/google-sees-a-jump-in-phishing-attackscoming-from-within-iran/">Phishing attacks on Iranian Gmail users jump before Iranian election</a> (Ars Technica)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dpCjofVia75n71MVAFLFcDx5QQ6YM&ned=us">104 additional articles.</a></p>