The technical systems of the Authority of Information Security (AIS) under the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) showed that the agency discovered, warned about and gave instructions on dealing with 11,428 cyberattacks that caused incidents on information systems in Vietnam in the first 11 months of the year, an increase of 1.9 percent over the same period last year.

Ninety percent of the cyberattacks were phishing. Meanwhile, malware and deface attacks totaled 884 and 451 incidents, respectively.

At the same time last year, AIS publicized a report on the number of cyberattacks on information systems in Vietnam, which showed that there were 11,213 cyber incidents, including 3,930 phishing, 1,524 defacing and 5,759 malware attacks. 

The figures showed a sharp increase in the number of attacks.

Bui Thai Duong from Vietnamese Network Securities JSC (VNSC) said these show the serious situation of information insecurity in Vietnam. Many internet users in Vietnam lack knowledge about security and have not attended general training courses about information safety.

According to Nguyen Van Cuong from BKAV Corporation, the figures reflect the current situation regarding cyberattacks in Vietnam: most of the attacks are phishing, targeting users.

“Since users’ awareness of information security is still low, conducting phishing attacks on users is a simple and ‘effective’ method which can bring wanted results, from attack costs to the number of victims,” Cuong explained.

The sharp increase shows that the situation is serious, and that it is necessary to provide more intensive training programs to internet users to raise their awareness about information security skills.

The sharp rise is attributed to the increased popularity of the internet, the development of attack techniques and low awareness of the internet users.

According to Cuong, website impersonation, fraudulent appropriation by links or compressed files, credit card phishing, and property appropriation through QR codes are the most common forms of phishing attacks.

Bui Thai Duong from VSEC also said the company has discovered attacks targeting businesses so far this year, from small to medium- and large-scale, most of which were phishing attacks via businesses’ email systems.

Also, phishing attacks via messaging apps are prevented every day.

Duong recommended that users should not download and open files from insecure sources, or access strange links.

Van Anh