VietNamNet Bridge – Millions of iPhone users in Vietnam can sigh with relief as BKAV, the best known internet security solution provider in Vietnam, has said that users were not hurt by hacking of many iPhone users in Australia and the US.

Many iPhone users in Australia and the US had accounts hacked recently because they used their iPhone accounts with some online services. Meanwhile, Vietnamese have been spared from the incident because few of them use these services.

Ngo Tuan Anh, vice president of BKAV, a well known internet security expert, said that a series of online services had been attacked recently. From the affected accounts of the online services, the attackers logged into iCloud.com and hacked iPhones.

e-Bay, for example, has reportedly had 145 million accounts affected after attacks. Experts are questioning whether online security solutions used in Vietnam will continue to be effective, after malware was found on eBay’s site.

However, Anh said that online services remain unfamiliar to the majority of Vietnamese using iPhones. Online services can only grow in use when they are supported by a perfect online payment infrastructure.

“There is no need for Vietnamese to worry that their iPhones have been hacked. Apple should not be blamed for the latest attacks,” Anh commented.

Buu Dien some days ago quoted several foreign newspapers as reporting that many Apple users in Australia complained that their iPhones, iPads or Macs were hacked by Olig Pliss.

Later, users in the US also reported that their devices were hijacked through Find My iPhone on iCloud.com. After locking the devices, the hijackers contacted the users and told them to remit $50-100 to their accounts at PayPal to be able to get the devices back.

The victims of the iPhone attacks were advised to contact Apple for support, but they were also warned that they would lose all the data saved in the phones. Therefore, iPhone users were told to back up data to protect from future hacks.

In related news, BKAV has released a report showing that 22.7 percent of smartphones in Vietnam have been infected with malware. It is estimated that smartphone users lose VND3.9 billion a day because of malware.

The report was based on statistics provided by BKAV’s virus supervision system. In the first five months of 2014 alone, Smartphone BKAV Mobile Security found 621,000 malicious codes. Meanwhile, the figure was much lower at 528,000 for the whole year of 2013.

When asked why users can easily have their pockets picked, BKAV’s experts explained that viruses hide themselves in the apps like famous games such as Fruit Ninja, Flappy Bird and Pikachu. Malware can also be spread through hacked/cracked games or movie-watching software.

“It is a growing tendency that hackers now target mobile devices for their attacks and that mobile viruses are booming,” Son said.

Buu Dien