Vietnam denies involvement in malware attacks

Jake Widman
Wednesday, 07 April 2010 12:06

Business IT - Security

The Vietnames government has issued a statement denying that it had anything to do with recent malware attacks against Vietnamese-speaking computer users.

Last week, the Google Online Security Blog took note of a recent cyberattack against people using Vietnamese language software.

The malware came in the form of Vietnamese language keyboard drivers for Windows PCs.

According to a post by Neel Mehta of the Google security team, infected machines were used both to spy on the users and to create a botnet that participated in DDOS attacks against political blogs.

Mehta specifically mentioned blogs expressing opposition to bauxite mining initiatives in Vietnam, an effort supported by the government but opposed by some citizens. The post also linked the attacks (in character, not in practice) to the recent cyberattacks originating in China.

A related post by McAfee CTO George Kurtz on the McAfee Security Insights Blog offered more information.

According to Kurtz, the botnet was instigated late last year and started with an attack on www.vps.org, the Web site of the Vietnamese Professionals Society.

For more on the attack and Vietnam's reaction, see Page 2.