Vietnamese websites have suffered nearly 7,700 cyber attacks in the first three months of 2017, according to a recent report by state-run Vietnam Computer Emergency Response Team (VNCERT).

The statistics were announced by Nguyen Khac Linh, deputy director of VNCERT, at the opening ceremony of APCERT Drill 2017 in Hanoi on Wednesday.

The cyber security drill, themed ‘Emergence of a New DDoS Threat’, was attended by experts from 20 Asia-Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT) countries and territories.

In the first quarter of 2017, Vietnamese websites have suffered 2,853 deface attacks; 3,783 devices have been infected with malware; and 1,050 websites have fallen victim to phishing attempts, Lich said.

The latest cyber security breach happened earlier this month, when two teenage boys hacked into two airports in southern Vietnam, including Tan Son Nhat in Ho Chi Minh City, to draw attention to security loopholes in the airports’ websites for authorities to fix.

“Most of the attacks on Vietnamese websites have been found to originate from foreign servers,” Lich noted, stressing that it was therefore necessary for cyber authorities in different nations to work closely in tracking down and exposing those responsible.

During Wednesday’s drill, VNCERT predicted the most common types of cyber attacks to be seen in 2017, namely ransomware attacks on mobile and storage devices, attacks on government and business websites, attacks on Internet of Things (IoT) devices, advanced persistent threats (APT) targeting government agencies and infrastructures, and malicious codes spread across social media.

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