Just within
several days of early June, technology and security forums have reckoned
hundreds of “.vn” websites which have been hacked, including the websites of
government agencies and ministries.

Hackers left the messages in the Chinese language or the image of Chinese flag

Not only
targeting individual websites, the attacks have also aimed at the ministries
and agencies’ websites with the domain name of “.gov.vn” which take slack
security measures. The massive hacking into Vietnamese websites has also been
recognized by domestic and international forums which have counted hundreds of
attack cases.

In many
cases, the hackers left the messages in the Chinese language or even the image
of Chinese flag. On some international technology forums, people wrote that
this could be a behavior of retaliation of Chinese hackers who target
Vietnamese websites, after some Chinese websites were hacked.

Most of the
government agencies’ websites hacked on June 4, were the websites of
departments and divisions under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development (MARD) at mard.gov.vn and agroviet.gov.vn, including vinhlong.mard.gov.vn/index.html,
phunu.agroviet.gov.vn/, mne.mard.gov.vn/, tichhop.mard.gov.vn/,
phathanh.mard.gov.vn/, kehoach.agroviet.gov.vn/…

Besides
this, some other gov.vn domain names were also hacked, including chebien.gov.vn,
giongcaytrong.gov.vn, as well as the websites of other private enterprises.

Slack security measures pave the way
for attacks

Security
experts say that the websites hacked recently all apply slack security
measures. Hackers just need to penetrate into a root server, for example
mard.gov.vn, to be able to create impacts on tens of other websites at lower
levels. The attacked “.com.vn” websites were also mostly the websites run by
small private businesses.

The experts
also say that most of the websites are not well equipped with the measures to
protect information security. They do not regularly make the error fixing
updates; therefore, they could be easily hacked. Hackers even can make automatic
scanning into “.vn” and “.go.vn” websites with some software to find out the
systems which have security problems; then they can penetrate the systems
through the security holes.

According
to experts, the above said factors show that the hackers who attacked hundreds
of websites in Vietnam
over the last few days are not really professional and have high
qualifications. However, the experts have advised network administrators and
webmasters to backup data and check the security procedures, as well as update
error fixing versions in order to prevent possible risks.

Vietnamese hackers condemn the
attack to Chinese websites

Regarding
the attack to some Chinese websites on June 2, which has led to the behavior of
taking rehabilitation of hacking Vietnamese websites, some well- known
administrators of security forums in Vietnam have condemned for the behavior of
attacking Chinese websites.

“If it is
true that some Vietnamese hackers have hacked some Chinese websites, this
should be seen as a sudden emotional behavior. This will bring nothing,” conmale, the
administrator of HVA forum commented.

Another
administrator of HVA said that though he does not know who are the people that are
hacking Chinese websites; but he thinks they are still very young and immature.
This has been reflected in the colors and the deface images they used and left
after hacking, plus the inaccurate English.

“The
hacking and retaliation of the Vietnamese and Chinese hackers will not bring
any benefits to any sides. If the attacks continue, the biggest suffers will be
the institutions and private enterprises of the two sides, since the websites
are destroyed continuously,” kientran worte.

“You may
feel satisfied when you can destroy some websites just within some minutes, but
you do not understand that by doing this, you have indirectly made hundreds of
websites in Vietnam
suffer,” he continued.

An expert,
who asked to be anonymous, said that though the number of attacks to Vietnamese
and Chinese websites is high, but they are not too serious because of the
simple way of attacking, which shows the low professional skills of hackers.

Huy Phong