Local websites easy targets for hackers, experts say

Vietnam’s websites are vulnerable by hackers as they used source codes of free software, experts warned.

Dr. Vu Quoc Khanh, director of the Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Team, known as VNCERT, said websites using open source codes carried high risk of being attacked by hackers. He noticed open source codes do not provide security patches, which can prevent hackers from breaching into the system.

“The number of websites being attacked by hackers is increasing. They have too many breaches to patch,” Khanh said.

VNCERT’s survey showed more than 20 percent of government-run websites protected with high-security software do not have log files, which help detect system breaches by daily recording the data accessions into the network.

The survey also showed these websites’ security was low as hackers attacked 30 percent of these websites last year.

In a related news, the Vietnamnet website (www.vietnamnet.vn) were breached constantly this month as hackers accessed into the system and remove the entire data. Bui Binh Minh, IT assistant of the website’s editor-in-chef, disclosed an insider was the attacker.