Computer malware causes US$860 million damage to Vietnam

In 2019, around 85.2 million computers in Vietnam were infected with malicious codes, resulting in a total loss of VND 20,892 billion (US$860 million), VnExpress reported.

According to Bkav's report on cybersecurity in Vietnam, the country’s information security in 2019 has improved; however, the number of malware infections and virus attacks was still high.

Illustrative photo

The number of infected computers in 2019 increased by 3.5% year-on-year. The damage caused by computer viruses to Vietnamese users also increased from VND14,900 billion (US$640 million) in 2018 to US$860 million in 2019.

The main cause for computer viruses to spread in Vietnam is the indiscreet software download. Bkav’s report said that eight out of 10 computers downloading software from the Internet had virus infection.

Besides, email is also the way of transmission when the number of virus infections via email attachments increased by 4% over the previous year, while the rate of transmission via removable devices decreased by 22% in 2019.

Currently, there are still 41.04% of computers containing SMB vulnerabilities, once exploited by Wanna Cry virus. Ransomware also stole data from 1.8 million computers 2019, an increase of 12% year-on-year. Of which, there were many servers of agencies and businesses, interrupting their operations for several days.

There was a large-scale campaign of foreign hackers attacking servers with weak passwords in Vietnam in 2019. Not only spreading malware, hackers also breached servers with weak passwords by getting unauthorized remote access to install malicious code to encrypt data. This type of attack disabled antivirus software because hackers gained full control of the server.

Bkav's report informed that 420,000 computers in Vietnam were infected with APT malware named W32.Fileless. "The technique that W32.Fileless uses is sophisticated and can be said to be invisible. This malware left no trace of their existence as a binary file on the computers’ hard drive like other malware. This malware spread via removable devices or through operating system vulnerabilities," Bkav said.

In order to enhance the protection against network attacks, Bkav recommended that users should take measures, such as downloading only software of clear origin, scanning removable devices before plugging into their computers, opening received files from the Internet in a safe environment, regularly updating software and setting strong passwords for the computer.