In the year to September, CyStack system recorded 450,000 website attacks around the world, of which 8,356 were made in Viet Nam. — Photo store.hp.com

More than 2,500 websites with Vietnamese domains were attacked in the third quarter, meaning Viet Nam stands in 10th in terms of the largest number of cyber attacks in the world.

This number was tracked by the CyStack Attack Map system, developed by the Viet Nam-based cyber security platform Cystack. It detected 127,367 attacks on websites around the world in the last three months, down slightly compared to the same period last year.

However, the number of attacks on Vietnamese websites increased by 113 per cent over a year earlier (from 1,183 to 2,523). The domain names on the receiving end of the most malicious attempts were .com, .vn and .net.

“One website was being attacked every minute. When a website is successfully hacked, hackers can steal company data, change the website interface, plant malicious code or direct users to phishing sites,” the report said.

CyStack research showed that 70 per cent of the attacks were targeted at websites using popular open source WordPress CMS (content management system), followed by Joomla and DNN.

Vulnerabilities in websites using WordPress often stemmed from outdated plugins, themes or website versions, or users had downloaded plugins and themes from untrusted sources that had been installed with malicious code.

In addition, the Linux operating system and Apache web server were also the most targeted by hackers with 64.8 per cent and 42.4 per cent, respectively.

In the year to September, CyStack system recorded 450,000 website attacks around the world, of which 8,356 were made in Viet Nam. — VNS