The Naikon attackers, active for the last five years, appear to be Chinese-speaking and their primary targets are top-level government agencies and civil and military organisations in countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Myanmar, Singapore, Nepal, Thailand, Laos and China. — Photo kaspersky

HCM CITY (Biz Hub) — A hacker group, dubbed Naikon, continues to successfully use old vulnerabilities to exploit national organisations in several Asia-Pacific countries, including Viet Nam, according to the Russia-based Kaspersky Lab.

The Naikon attackers, active for the last five years, appear to be Chinese-speaking and their primary targets are top-level government agencies and civil and military organisations in countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Myanmar, Singapore, Nepal, Thailand, Laos and China.

The hackers typically begin an attack with an email carrying an attachment that contains information of interest to the potential victim. The attachment might look like a Word document, but is in fact an executable file with a double extension that can execute code without the user's knowledge or consent.

Kaspersky Lab advised organisations to protect themselves against Naikon by not opening attachments and links from people they do not know, use advanced anti-malware solutions, and make sure they have up-to-date versions of operating systems with all patches installed.

Besides, any dubious attachment should be opened it in a sandbox, a security mechanism for separating running

programmes, it said. — VNS