In the Fifth Security World 2010 Conference and Showcase held recently in Hanoi, Nguyen Viet The, director of the Department of IT operations, Department General of Logistics and Technology, Ministry of Public Security has evaluated the situation of high tech crimes in 2009 is still alarming and complex. This is reflected through the following indicators: increase of website attacks and malicious viruses, the number of attacks has doubled and the criminals are targeting agencies in the financial, banking and stock exchange sectors for illegal profits.
When IT develops, we are facing new emerging challenges in the cyber space namely the problem of hackers. The explosion of IT and the development of a flat world have made the problem of cyber crimes more complex. According to the statistics, during 2009, our country has encountered more than 1,000 websites attacked by hackers, a double increase compared to 2008 (461 websites) and triple if compared to 2007 (342). The Internet network in Vietnam still poses latent security risks. In the first three months of this year, more than 300 websites belonging to individuals and organizations with the domain name have been have been probed and attacked by foreign hackers. The victim websites belong mainly to online transaction businesses, banks and service providers.
According to Nguyen Viet The, the reason for these attacks is largely due to the weakness of the websites in Vietnam with regard to the control of loopholes, weak management and by ignoring the security warning of the safety information organizations. The number of vulnerable security points discovered in 2009 has reached 4,000 (in 2008 only 3,500) with 30 percent of the loopholes are of high risk. Nearly half of the security loopholes (49 percent) do not have the remedy patches provided by the software supplier.Nguyen Viet informed that viruses are still a dangerous threat since 2009. More than 64.7 million times/computers were infected with viruses of which the most widespread are the family of the super polymorphic virus W32.SalityVF.PE which has infected over 483,000 computers. In Vietnam, there are more than 47,000 new variants of computer viruses, an increase of 30 percent compared to 2008.First appeared in 12-2008 and spreading widely by 4-2009, virus Conficker has caused headaches for security researchers and created confusion among computer users. It is estimated that in 2009, the damages caused by virus Conficker on infected computers have reached around $20 million. In Vietnam, there are 81,000 infected PC resulting in lost of billion VN Dong to businesses, organizations and individuals.
During 2009, with the 49 discovered cases of high-tech crimes alone, the damages caused by this sort of crime have reached thousand of billion VN Dong. The information attacks aimed at banks, stock exchange market are on the rise. But due to the sensitive nature of this sector, the majority of the cases are not reported or made public so people cannot totally assess the dangerous degree of such attacks.
New Threats
Answering questions from the press, Nguyen Viet The informed that one of the present threat is the installing of malware right on the hardware component. He gave an example of a battery charger through the USB port bought from the US also has malware. And inspection to discover malwares in these equipments is very difficult and requires the coordination of many countries to inspect right from the manufacturing and assembling stages. Though at the moment there are not many equipment discovered to be infected with malwares.
After the announcement of both VinaPhone and Viettel to supply iPhone with cheap price, around VND 4 million, even at Zero VND, an iPhone "fever" has erupted in Vietnam. Only after a few days after the announcement, there are already about 50,000 registrations to buy iPhone online. At the Security World 2010, security specialists have issued warning that this will be a new target for high-tech criminals when Apple comes to Vietnam.When the "Apple" becomes an electronic wallet to be used in e-commerce, e-business transforming the iPhone into a mini PC, the degree of danger will increase.In addition, the supplier Apple still has not got any information security safeguarding solution for iPhone and on the web there is already news of hackers trying to break into the "Apple." Hence, I believe 2010 will be a challenge for web security, particularly with the new services.
Saving Confidential Data
On this issue, Vu Quoc Khanh, Director of the Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Team (VNCERT) remarked that the smart phone of Apple uses an operating system and can install or download new software and in the process can be infected with malicious virus.Khanh warned that the user must be vigilant when saving confidential data in those phones series. On the other hand, internet service providers must exchange information, update their security services and join hand to fix the problem when it happens.Following are some of the predictions on the cyber security dangers in 2010:
* The attack technology will be more sophisticate and more effective; malwares will be more "malicious" and there will be more new security challenges in 2010.
* As the global economy is going through crisis, in the information era, hackers will strive every possible way to profit and make money.
* Social networks will become an appealing prey for hackers as they know that these social networks are not just a transient trend but a firm evolution into an effective means helping people to network and communicate with each other.
* In 2009, saw the appearance of a series of fake antivirus softwares in just a short period of time causing confusion to the web users around the world. By sending emails or through search engines, hackers lured the user to visit their fake anti virus online scanning websites, which have an interface similar to Windows. According to the statistics, in 2009 there were 144 fake anti-virus softwares. It is predicted that there will be many more fake anti-virus programs.
* There will appear many bootnets administered by highly skilled hackers together with the danger of possible wars on the internet (cyber wars).
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