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Taking advantage of pandemic, cyber attacks increase sharply

October 7, 2021 | 01:31 pm GMT+7

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, cyber criminals have taken advantage of the attention of the whole society to increase cyber attacks, spread malware and scams.

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The Authority of Information Security under the Ministry of Information and Communications reported that there were 1,074 cyberattacks causing problems on information systems in Việt Nam last month, a month-on-month decrease of 6.45 per cent.

The authority also recorded 3,241 cyber attacks in third quarter of this year, including 547 phishing, 579 web defacing, and 2,115 malware attacks, an increase of 57 per cent over the same period last year and an increase of 97 per cent compared to the second quarter of this year.

In the first nine months of this year, the number of attacks totalled 6,156 including 1,404 phishing, 1,109 web defacing and 3,643 malware attacks, up 30.15 per cent year-on-year.

Explaining the cause of the increase in cyber attack incidents in the first half of this year, some security experts believed that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, hackers took advantage to increase cyber attacks, spread malicious code and scams to destroy and steal information of users as well as organisations and businesses.

It is also a period when agencies, organisations and businesses in the country promoted the application of information technology and digital transformation. Therefore, cyber attacks soared compared to before.