The system, called Gaia or Single Sign-On, controls access by millions of users worldwide to almost all of the company s Web services. The program, code named Gaia for the Greek goddess of the earth, was attacked in a lightning raid taking less than two days last December. The report said the hack started with an IM message to a Googler in China who was using Microsoft MSN Messenger. The intruders do not appear to have stolen passwords of Gmail users, and the company quickly started making significant changes to the security of its networks.
Source: https://threatpost.com/nytimes-report-attackers-hit-googles-password-system-042010/73848/