Vietnamese hackers allegedly steal 50,000 accounts — Talk Vietnam

Vietnamese hackers allegedly steal 50,000 accounts

March 16, 2015

More than 50,000 accounts of customers of Vietnam’s state-run telecom giant VNPT were stolen and leaked on the Internet over the weekend, company spokesperson Bui Quoc Viet said on March 15.

The accounts, including personal information and login credentials, belong to customers of the VNPT branch in the southern province of Soc Trang, Viet said.



“Hackers targeted the software used to look up customer information hosted on an old server that is being replaced at VNPT Soc Trang,” he elaborated.

Viet did not comment on the culprits behind the attack, even though Security Daily, a Vietnamese-language Internet security website, reported on Saturday that a hacker outfit called DIE Group has claimed responsibility.

It may be a Vietnamese hacker group, Security Daily said.

DIE Group has posted the stolen accounts on their Facebook page, saying they are from “more than 10,000 mobile phone and landline accounts of VNPT,” according to Security Daily.

The login section on the VNPT Soc Trang website is seen in this screenshot taken in Ho Chi Minh City on March 16, 2015.

Security Daily said on its website that the real number of stolen accounts could be as many as 50,000, which was later confirmed by the VNPT media person.

The stolen accounts include the name, address, phone number, username and password that can be used to log in to the customer service section on the VNPT Soc Trang website.

“Hackers can use such information to log in and launch other attacks using the authorized access,” Security Daily warned.

“The leaked information can be a gold mine to spammers and swindlers.”

VNIST JSC, the operator of Security Daily, said the incident suggests that there are dangerous security holes in the VNPT system, which makes it vulnerable to hackers.

“Thanks to such vulnerabilities, hackers may be able to steal most of the information, including the system administrative accounts, from VNPT databases,” the company said.

The vulnerability was fixed on Saturday, VNPT deputy general director Pham Duc Long told tech website ICTnews the same day.

“VNPT has strengthened security in its entire network to ensure customers that their private information is safe,” Long was quoted as saying.

The attackers said on Facebook that they had decided to leak the stolen information online after “receiving no response from VNPT about our discovery of their security holes.”

DIE Group, however, did not reveal the usernames and passwords of the stolen accounts for fear that they may be used by other hacker groups, according to their Facebook status.

VNPT, fully known as the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group, is a telecommunications company owned by the Vietnamese government.

The Hanoi-based company boasts more than 60 million mobile phone subscribers, nearly 10 million landline phone subscribers and “dozens of millions of Internet users,” according to its website

Vietnamese hackers allegedly steal 50,000 accounts — Talk Vietnam

Copyright issues with 3 Vietnam Websites

The US Motion Picture Association has asked the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to deal with three websites that violated US copyright regulations.

Phim47.com infringes film copyrights

Upon receiving the request, the ministry has quickly inspected websites 1. http://phim47.com, 2. http://v1vn.com and 3. http://pub.vn.
Nguyen Huu Minh, owner of phim47 and Nguyen Van Chung, owner of v1vn all rented space in which to store their hardware and data. Pub.vn was established in 2010 by Trinh Anh Tuan, who bought the domain from P.A Vietnam Company.
Owners of phim47 and v1vn downloaded movies then uploaded them onto their websites so people were able watch them online at no charge.
Pub.vn, also downloaded movies via torrent sites free of charge, and they then charged online viewers VND2,000 per movie.
“We will apply the fines and ask the website owners to remove all of the movies deemed to be in violation of the regulations, in accordance with regulation 47 regarding copyright infringement.”said Vu Xuan Thanh, inspector from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. “We handled the cases upon receiving a civil complaint,” he added, “however, if MPA, or any other foreign organisation, brings the case to court, the result could be different.”
The fine for infringement is around VND50-100 million (USD2,400-4,800).

Most Vietnamese gov’t websites could collapse any time, survey | Look At Vietnam

Most Vietnamese gov’t websites could collapse any time, survey 

June 1, 2012

A recent survey found that 78 percent of Vietnamese government websites are vulnerable to cyber attacks, VietNamNet reported.
The statistic was reported by Internet security firm Vietnam Information Security Association during a conference on expanding the role of online government in Hanoi last Friday. 
The association team randomly tested 100 websites with the domain name .gov.vn. Nearly 3,700 security flaws were detected during the survey.
Around 58 percent of the sites showed “serious security weakness” and around 20 percent exhibited “high security weakness,” a representative from the association said.

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“Around 80 percent of the websites do not meet the minimum security requirements.
“Around 78 percent are susceptible to have their content altered or their operating engines collapse at anytime,” the representative said at the conference.
The Hanoi-based Internet security firm Bkav calculated that from the beginning of this year, six Vietnamese websites had been attacked every day.
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Thanh Nien News 

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

More than 300 Vietnamese websites hacked in October | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update

More than 300 Vietnamese websites hacked in October

November 11, 2011 about Uncategorized

LookAtVietnam - At least 345
Vietnamese government and business websites were hacked during October,
according to recent statistics provided by the Ha Noi-based Bach Khoa Internet
Security Corporation (BKav).

Only nine cases
were conducted by domestic hackers, the rest came from abroad.

Also in
October, BKav said more than 3,500 new types of computer viruses appeared in Viet Nam,
infecting an estimated of 4.4 million computers, most notable was W32.Sality.PE.

Two popular websites, diadiem.com
and vozforums.com, recovered their domain names on Monday after
losing them to hackers at the end of last month.
VietNamNet/Viet
Nam
News



More than 300 Vietnamese websites hacked in October | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update

Doing business on bodies of others

With 15,000 dong, anybody can download sexy pictures of celebrities onto their hand phones. The selling of sexy pictures for mobile phones has become a business, and business is good.

Advertisements for picture download services in local newspapers.

When they post their own sexy photos on their blogs, perhaps many girls don’t think that their pictures might be used for commercial purposes one day and spread widely. Perhaps actresses also don’t think that their photos could easily become the means of entertainment and money-making of others, who both spite the law and business morals.

“Cool” service

“Music must be blaze-up, photos must be hot like this,” “Burning scenes by…,” “The whole collection of sexy pictures of…” are advertisements for music and picture download services for mobile phones.

Going with these small ads are pictures of famous Vietnamese and foreign actresses and models like Hong Kong actress Liu Yi Fei, South Korean pop star BoA, Vietnamese model Tang Thanh Ha and hot girl Thuy Top.

These ads cover many advertising pages of big and small newspapers, most popularly in magazines for students like Hoa Hoc Tro and Muc Tim.

These invitations aim to make mobile subscribers send messages to ask for the pictures and pay fees to service providers. Visiting websites introduced in these ads, one can see that the pictures are really hot, even more than the advertisements, with the presence of sex models from Japan and Thailand.

Experts say that the golden age for paging, ringtone and picture download services for cell phones has passed as modern handphones can be connected to computers. Software products that enable users to create their own ringtones and background pictures are also available.

In addition, the boom of service providers in recent years has forced them to struggle fiercely to survive. Service providers have to create diversified and attractive services to get customers.

Nevertheless, many think the competition is turning in a harmful direction as most new pictures focus on sex. In the past, pictures of international celebrities in bikinis were considered to be very hot. At present, topless and nude photos of sex models are available. Several years ago, pictures of artists came from newspapers. Currently, most of them come from movies.

The trend of young girls uploading hot pictures of themselves on their blogs is also being exploited as these pictures are modified to become products for commercial services.

Vague things

Advertisement on a website.

Asked whether they know that their pictures are being used for business, some artists say they know, some say they don’t, but none really seem to care. This is indisputably one way to advertise one’s image. Moreover, it is very difficult to sue service providers.

Some young artists are even ready to provide pictures to service providers to promote their images.

As a result, many companies go further in illegally using pictures, music works and video clips of artists. Some note below service ads that they hold the copyrights of the products they supply. It can only be guessed if they know that each picture they co-opt is the property of the photographer and the photographed, or the press agency if the picture is published -- it can probably safely be assumed they do though.

A senior official of an Internet-based value-added service providing company said: “Most of the pictures we use are taken from newspapers. If we use photos of artists we are acquainted with, we ask for their permission. That’s all! The pictures of foreign artists abound on the Internet, we can use them freely!

Downloading sexy pictures of a famous model-actress onto a hand phones.

“Many people think that we pocket all VND15,000/message so they say we are dishonest. Actually, we earn a small part of that number. The remaining goes into the pockets of telecom service providers or mobile service providers and the owners of the service number. If we had to pay royalties, we couldn’t survive.”

The question is: Do service providers have the right to use assets of others for profit? What is the responsibility of mobile service companies when they allocate service phone numbers to others and don’t supervise how they are used? Does the Press Agency keep a watch on the contents of websites which post ads for music and picture download services to prevent violations?

Photos of artists are a few among many products offered by message service providers. Other ones are fortune-telling, love-making position guides, sexual-choosing services. These services have been complained about, but they still exist -- and many are concerned about the direction they are going.

China blocks iTunes Store over pro-Tibetan content

The Chinese government is now blocking access to the iTunes Store as a result of pro-Tibetan content, writes the Sydney Morning Herald. The regime recently learned that Olympic athletes have been downloading an album called Songs for Tibet, with tracks by artists like Moby, Sting and Suzanne Vega. While in support of "peace-related projects" associated with the Dalai Lama, the album is also a form of protest against China's 1950 invasion of Tibet, and its continuing suppression of political and religious freedoms.
The album was deliberately released on iTunes August 5th, three days before the start of the Beijing Olympics, and the compliation's backer -- The Art of Peace Foundation -- has offered free copies to competing athletes, in the hope they will show support. The Chinese government's blocking of iTunes appears to have begun on Monday, when an American organization called Campaign for Tibet claimed that "over 40 Olympic athletes in North America, Europe and even Beijing" had downloaded Songs for Tibet.China's regime maintains strict controls on Internet access, and currently blocks over 18,000 websites. Other sites, while accessible within the country, may be filtered to remove references to things like the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
Filed under: Apple