More than 700 websites in Viet Nam were attacked in the first week of August — Photo culturedigitally.org

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — More than 700 websites in Viet Nam, including 18 government websites, were attacked in the first week of August, the Viet Nam Computer Emergency Response Team (VNCert) reported.

Defacement, an attack that changes the visual appearance of the site or a webpage, accounted for the largest number, 357, of which 169 cases were fixed by August 7.

VNCert said it would continue to send alerts until the problems are resolved.

Notably, the centre reported that Chinese hackers took control of 66 domain names whose host computer's internet protocol (IP) addresses are located in Viet Nam.

VNCert has asked internet service providers and other related agencies to work together and fix problems immediately after detecting, classifying, analyzing, and assessing the problems.

The centre also reported 183 cases of phishing attacks in the period, including one on a State agency's website.

It has taken down 54 cases so far.

Phishing refers to scamming users into providing information that is then used for identity theft.

For this purpose, fake websites purporting to be those of large organisations like Google or banks or financial organisations are used, VNCert said. — VNS