Computer Virus Boom in Vietnam Causes Huge Monetary Loss

A survey by the Vietnamese high-profile anti-virus agency BKIS reveals that viruses were responsible for an average loss of VND 591,000 per user in 2007 covering at least four million computer users in Vietnam. VietNamNet Bridge reported this on January 21, 2008.

Nguyen Tu Quang, Director of BKIS, said that the agency computed the loss by asking the nation's computer users to multiply the total number of their non-workable days, due to viruses during 2007, by their average income on daily basis, as per the news published by VietNamNet Bridge on January 29, 2008.

As many as 96.5% of participants in the survey said that malware attacked their computers in 2007, with the same percentage saying some virus entered their USB.

The most destructive virus affecting data during 2007 had been the W32.Ukuran.Worm. According to reports, it infected 50,500 computers in just six days in the middle of July that year. Researchers later found the virus to originate from Indonesia. The virus damaged all data files with extension .LDF, .DBF, .BAK and .MDF created with SQL and FoxPro. The victims included banking and financial institutions.

According to BKIS, another massive source of worms is China, a notion that other global anti-virus agencies confirmed.

The agency reported that millions of Vietnamese PCs were contaminated with Trojan variants targeting online games, revealing major security holes in networks. Statistics from BKIS show that during September-December 2007, almost 2,000 variants of trojans used to capture passwords for online games appeared on Vietnam Internet and all indicated China as their source of origin. For, it was found that the stolen passwords and other information of Vietnamese online gamers were transmitted back to Chinese servers.

In addition, hackers attacked 342 Vietnamese websites in 2007, despite improving security on network, BKIS said. The agency also warns that 40% of security websites in Vietnam are subject to hackers' attacks.

Vu Ngoc Son, a BKIS expert, said that the 2007 boom in viruses is responsible for the country's serious situation. He said that his system recorded as many as 33.6 Million computers in the country having suffered virus attacks. VietNamNet Bridge published this in news on January 29, 2008.

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» SPAMfighter News - 2/5/2008