Influences of e-war to Vietnam would be not big | Look At Vietnam

Influences of e-war to Vietnam would be not big

May 31, 2012

LookAtVietnam – Most of the current Vietnamese websites now simply provide
information, and they are not associated with inside systems such as level-3- or
4- public services. Therefore, if a cyber war occurs, it would not have big
influences to Vietnam.

More than half of the systems cannot record attacks
Vu Quoc Khanh, Director of VNCERT (the Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Team)
said at a workshop on building up information security policies in developing
e-government held on May 25, that the budget for information security solutions
just amounts to a small proportion in the agencies’ total budget for the
information technology application program.
As for state agencies, 29 percent of agencies plan to spend 10-15 percent of the
budget on information security solutions, while the average level is 19 percent
for the whole country. Sixteen percent of agencies plan to invest 5-9.9 percent
of the total budget, lower than the average level of 19 percent, while 24
percent of agencies would pay less than 5 percent of the budget, while the whole
country’s level is 38 percent.
A survey of VNCERT has found out that 53 percent of units which have information
security systems cannot record attack behaviors. This means that though more
than 50 percent of Vietnamese websites have houses, and their homes have been
equipped with locks; however, the owners of the houses would not know if burglar
broke into their houses, because they are not informed by the system.
The survey has also found out that 63 percent of units cannot calculate the
financial loss caused by the attacks, while the figure is 64 percent for state
agencies.
VNISA, the Vietnam Information Security Association, which carried out
assessments on 100 accidental websites of government agencies (.gov.vn), has
found that 80 percent of websites do not apply safeguard system against the
scanning, such as the intrusion prevention system. It has also estimated that 78
percent of the websites could be attacked and collapsed at any time.
Especially, the websites have popular weak points, such as the information
telltale from using ASP.NET of Microsoft (15 percent), the errors relating to
SQL Injection (11 percent), or XSS (9 percent).
Vietnam nonresistant to cyber war
Nguyen Viet The, former of Head of the Informatics Agency under the Ministry of
Public Security, has many times warned that cyber crimes have become more and
more professional, therefore, network security would continue to be a burning
problem in 2012, which may lead to a cyber war.
Khanh also thinks that Vietnamese websites comprise of many holes, and that if
an attack is carried out, targeting to the websites, it would be very difficult
to ensure the operation of the whole system. However, as for unimportant
websites which do not need heavy investment, the administrators would be able to
recover the system after a short time. Meanwhile, very important websites which
must be online 24/24 all have information security measures already.
It is estimated that errors cannot be found in 20 percent of the systems which
hackers would find it very difficult to attack. Meanwhile, as for DDoS attacks,
one would need the support from outside, including the measure of expanding
bandwidth.
To prepare to struggle against a cyber war, according to Khanh, it’d better to
focus on protecting the most important objectives, instead of “trying to protect
any pieces of land of the territory.”
As for unimportant websites, they should be given warnings about holes and
recommendations.
Source: Buu Dien