Google (News - Alert) is pointing the fingers at suspected hackers in China for a recent hack of its mail program, Gmail. Hundreds of Gmail passwords have been compromised from accounts, which include American politicians, and so Google is putting the blame on an already strained relationship with China.

China, however, says it is not to blame for the hack.

The scam is known as spear phishing, which tries to trick people into visiting a genuine-looking website in order to get users to type in their login credentials. Google said: “This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei called it unacceptable for Google to blame China for trying to steal the email account passwords of senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists.

The allegations that the Chinese government is supporting hacking are baseless, said Hong, and stem from what he says are ulterior motives. He added the Chinese government highly values Internet safety and monitors the Internet.

China tightly controls the Internet in what it says is an attempt to kept harmful material such as pornography off the web. But many human rights groups and governments say the real reason is censor pro-democracy activists and dissents against the ruling Communist Party.

The breach is likely to further complicate uneasy relations between the U.S. company and Chinese authorities, which have been strained over censorship and a previous cyberscheme.

Eric Grosse said in a blog post the goal of the scam seems to have been to monitor the contents of the users' e-mails.

Grosse insisted that the California-based firm's internal systems had not been affected and that the hijackings were not the result of a security problem with Gmail itself.

The White House said it was investigating the reports but did not believe official U.S. government e-mail accounts had been breached, while the FBI said it was working with Google following the attacks.

South Korea's presidential office said it had not been affected, and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said it had warned all staff “not to use, send, or receive any official information through private emails such as Gmail.”

According to the Associated Press, China's official Xinhua News Agency blasted Google in an unsigned commentary on Thursday saying the company “provided no solid proof” to support its claims that the hack attacks originated in China.

Xinhua said Google's complaints had “become obstacles for enhancing global trust between stakeholders in cyberspace.”

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