Nearly 2,200 IP addresses of governmental agencies have been infected with botnet in the first half of 2014, according to the Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Team. — Photo tienphong.vn

A botnet is collection of computers connected to the Internet that, without the knowledge of the owners, had been set up to forward spam messages and viruses to other computers through the Internet.

In May alone, 989 Vietnamese websites were attacked, including 62 websites of state agencies. VNCERT has detected that Chinese hackers have carried out 541 attacks, with 16 occurring on the government websites.

The department director Vu Quoc Khanh stated that it has cooperated with some government agencies to remove botnet to ensure information safety.

However, he added that the agencies should be more vigilant over risks of botnet attacks in order to steal confidential information.

On the issue of spam messages and emails, Khanh noted that spam delivery and claims of customers on spam have decreased since the beginning of this year. He stated that spam messages with fraudulent information to lure users to call 1900 central office have increased.

In the first six months of 2014, mobile service providers had also detected 34 million spam messages. VNCERT has recalled the management codes of nine enterprises providing message advertising services. Besides, it has asked mobile service providers to prevent subscribers from delivering spam messages and has resolved service numbers sending spam messages.

In order to reduce the number of spam messages, VNCERT is implementing the second phase of its project on the installation of Internet safety monitoring system. In the second half of the year, the department will stop spam messages by continuing to boost activities such as establishing a special unit on spam prevention and carrying out a project on information safety on mobile devices with Android operating system. — VNS