HÀ NỘI — Up to 170 Vietnamese websites were attacked during the week-long Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday, according to the Authority of Information Security under the Ministry of Information and Communications. 

Attacks occurred at 55 websites with domains using .vn; 10 governmental agencies and organisations (.gov.vn); and 98 with domains using .com. Hackers mostly performed defacements and planted malicious codes into the source codes of the websites. 

Also, 116,000 Vietnamese Internet Protocol (IP) addresses remain in the fake network created by malicious codes. According to the Authority of Information Security, the number of fake IP addresses fell dramatically from 234,838 during the week before Tết. 

Statistics released by the authority show that computer users are to be blamed for 95 per cent of the attacks. Late in December 2017, The Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Team (VNCERT) found 438,000 Vietnamese email accounts had their passwords disclosed, including 930 “gov.vn” accounts which belong to governmental agencies and organisations.

The team warned that a great number of users had their passwords revealed through social networks and online services.

In mid-February, according to a report by multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider Kaspersky Lab, Việt Nam was among the top five countries suffering from the most Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the final quarter of 2017. The country’s share of worldwide DDoS attacks increased to 1.25 per cent from 0.59 per cent in the previous quarter. This pushed Việt Nam into fifth place behind China, the US, South Korea and Britain. — VNS