HCM CITY – Around 5.6 million routers in the world are easily hackable, Bách Khoa Technology Group (BKAV) warned in its latest report released early this week.

It said Việt Nam has 300,000 of them, meaning 300,000 networks can easily be attacked.

Since 2014 BKAV has been identifying and publicly warning about the weak router security, and many routers can be remotely controlled.

BKAV has dubbed the security weakness ‘Pet Hole’, likening it to a door that has openings to allow pets in and out.

“We strongly believe that Pet Holes still exist in many routers around the world because it is more difficult to fix a security problem in a network equipment than in a software,” Ngô Tuấn Anh, BKAV’s deputy chairman in charge of network security, said.

This was why BKAV studied 21 million vulnerable routers around the world to sound a warning and find a solution, he said.

India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Việt Nam have the largest number of vulnerable routers in the world, and 90 per cent of the weak routers were made in China.

BKAV security experts said the situation is the direst in internet history because hackers with basic skills can easily attack routers through Pet Hole.

But fixing the problem is very difficult, they said.

“With 300,000 weak-security routers, Việt Nam is facing a serious national security threat,” Anh warned.

BKAV provides tools for checking routers and fixing this problem at PetHole.net. — VNS