Chris Evans, Google’s Information Security Engineer and Tech Lead, has rejected the Gmail vulnerability rumored widely that would cause domain thieves recently.

After investigation, it is found that the cause was a rather simple phishing scheme that fooled domain’s owners to visit fake websites such as “google-hosts.com” and collected usernames/passwords of Gmail accounts. After gaining the user credentials, the attacker set up mail filters specifically designed to forward messages from web domain providers and consequently gain the controls of the domains.

There were some vulnerabilities involved to Gmail in the past but all were fixed immediately after discovered, and of course none are linked to recent domain thieves.

Evans also provided some tips to avoid phishing attacks:

To keep your Google account secure online, we recommend you only ever enter your Gmail sign-in credentials to web addresses starting with https://www.google.com/accounts, and never click-through any warnings your browser may raise about certificates. For more information on how to stay safe from phishing attacks, see our blog post here.