Chinese computer hackers broke into a lot of Gmail accounts, including US government officials and military personnel, said Google Incorporated on Wednesday.

The hacker attacks are not believed to be linked to a similar, yet more sophisticated, assault from China in 2009. The latest attack appeared to have relied heavily on “phishing” scams that many hackers use to get passwords from unsuspecting people.

Google took pride in their security measures for detecting the intrusion in a timely manner. Their system was able to disrupt the hacker attack and all the victims have been notified. In addition, their Gmail accounts have been secured.

Google refused to confirm if any top secret information were tampered during the breach or which specific department of the United States Government was attacked. The company only said that among the hundreds of user accounts that have been hacked are Chinese political activists, journalists, military personnel and officials in several other countries but mainly South Korea.

Google said that they have traced the origin of the hacker attacks and confirmed that it is from Jinan, China. Jinan is the location of a vocational school whose computers were allegedly used to hack Google computer systems over a year ago. More than 20 US companies were also included in the said attack.