HA NOI (Biz Hub) — Spyware had been targeting Vietnamese state agency websites for the past year, but the country did not have enough cybersecurity experts to cope with the attacks.

The statement was made by Nguyen Minh Duc, deputy director of Bkav's internet security division, at a conference on Tuesday in Ha Noi.

Bkav officially launches a forum for young people to share knowledge and experience on cyber security. Photos courtesy of Bkav

"Viet Nam does not have enough trained cyber security experts, and a similar problem is present around the world. A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in July this year paralysed three popular online newspapers for more than three weeks. These websites have larger broadband systems than others, so a question has been raised whether gernment agencies can resist attacks," Duc said.

During the past one year, Vu Ngoc Son, deputy director of Bkav's research and development section, regularly received requests for support from organisations. He said that spyware was usually sent to agencies via attached files on emails. Agencies received an attached file, named as an official document requesting, from an email address listed under the HCM City Department of Information and Communications. When users opened the file, viruses entered their computers.

"Many victims have been targeted by the attacks, such as the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of National Defence. Attacks can have great consequences, and confidential documents can be lost," Son said.

"After a year of investigations, we have recognised two ways of attack. The first is stealing email accounts to send emails with viruses, and the other one is fake email addresses."

The front page of the forum. It aims at connecting young people with great interest in cyber security.

According to statistics from Bkav, hackers exploited a hole in Microsoft Office and because of the large number of users, many computers were infected.

In Viet Nam, 2,045 agency and business websites were hacked this year, but the number of cyber security experts was too small to cope with all of them.

Bkav had trained staff through courses and seminars, and decided to expand the model by establishing a forum named www.whitehat.vn, he added.

The forum was founded to encourage young people to break into websites and networks to test and assess their security systems in a constructive manner.

"We hope that it will be a place for participants to exchange knowledge and enhance their skills to prepare for cyber security breakdowns," Duc said.

Besides providing in-depth knowledge, the forum will organise periodic online training courses for participants.

At a conference organised by the Ministry of Information and Communications at the beginning of 2012, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan asked the ministry to train cyber security staff. He said that a country with nearly 100 million people would need tens of thousands of employees working in the cyber security sector to ensure the control of national cyber space over the next 10 years. — VNS