VietNamNet Bridge - The Bach Khoa Anti-virus Center (BKAV), the nation’s leading internet security firm, has warned that it has found hidden links on many websites with the domain name ‘.gov.vn’, websites run by government agencies.

A senior executive of BKAV said that there might be existing vulnerabilities on the websites, or the websites were hacked, or the information was inserted by the administrators.

On June 30, 2016, a reader, who introduced himself as an website administrator, contacted Buu Dien newspaper, and informed them that many government agencies’ websites had been hacked and inserted with hidden URLs.

Prior to that, in mid-April 2016, Buu Dien once reported that an ad link of the world’s well-known football betting network m88.com appeared in the source code of the Vietnam’s Ha Nam provincial authorities’ official gazette at congbao.hanam.gov.vn.

A representative of the Ha Nam provincial People’s Committee admitted the existence of the link of m88.com, saying that the website was designed with the open source code which was not treated well. 

The Bach Khoa Anti-virus Center (BKAV), the nation’s leading internet security firm, has warned that it has found hidden links on many websites with the domain name ‘.gov.vn’, websites run by government agencies.

As a result, vulnerabilities existed for hackers to insert the link.

However, in an email to Buu Dien on June 30, the reader, said that congbao.hanam.gov.vn is not a particular case among the community’s website administrators and SEOs.

The reader cited a series of government websites which were hacked and inserted with hidden links such as haiduong.gov.vn; congbaothainguyen.gov.vn; congbao.quangbinh.gov.vn; congbao.danang.gov.vn; congbao.nghean.gov.vn; congbao.bentre.gov.vn; congbao.baria-vungtau.gov.vn; congbao.thuathienhue.gov.vn; congbao.quangngai.gov.vn; congbao.cantho.gov.vn; congbao.binhduong.gov.vn; congbao.bacgiang.gov.vn; congbao.angiang.gov.vn; congbao.travinh.gov.vn; congbao.phutho.gov.vn; congbao.dienbien.gov.vn; qbttehn.gov.vn; syt.bacgiang.gov.vn; bhxh.kiengiang.gov.vn; ldtbxh.hatinh.gov.vn and bhxhdaknong.gov.vn.

Also according to the reader, many units have openly put up for sale links with the domain names ending with “.gov.vn”.

Under Circular 24 dated August 18, 2015 setting the regulations on the management and use of internet resources, the ‘.gov.vn’ domain name is reserved for central and local agencies.

govvn.net, textlinkuytin.com and protextlink.com, for example, now offer to sell ‘gov.vn’ websites at prices of between VND100,000 and VND300,000 a month for each textlink.

The list of hacked websites provided by the reader was forwarded to BKAV; BKAV has confirmed that there exist hidden links on the websites.

At http://congbao.nghean.gov.vn/webpages/home/home.faces, when clicking right on a  mouse and choosing ‘xem nguon trang’, then dragging the cursor down to the bottom of the page source, other links appear: "http://bietthuvinpearl.vn", "http://vatlieumypham.com/san-pham/bo-hat-mo-shea-butter"  and http://incocdoimau.top. 

BKAV believes that those who inserted hidden links into government agencies’ websites hoped the rankings of the hidden links would be improved, because the search engines such as Google more highly appreciate ‘.gov’ websites. This would allow the links to have better display results.

BKAV said that no matter what the reasons were behind the insertion of the links, the existence of links is dangerous to websites and the problem must be fixed.

Buu Dien