Smart devices in Vietnam targeted by cybercriminals: report

By Tuan Anh   June 22, 2017 | 08:33 pm PT
Kaspersky Lab has found that Vietnam is one of the worst-hit victims of malware with many infected IoT devices.

Vietnam is among countries that are the most vulnerable to cyberattacks against the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) or "smart" devices, according to a recent report by Kaspersky Lab.

The company set up several traps known as "honeypots" and left them connected to the internet to see if they would be attacked. Within the first four months this year, there were tens of thousands of attempted connections from unique IP addresses every 24 hours.

China came first, accounting for 13.95 percent of all attacking IP addresses, followed by Vietnam with 12.26 percent.

"Most of the infected devices are IP cameras and DVRs. Many of them are widespread in China and Vietnam, as well as in Russia, Brazil, Turkey and other countries," according to the report.

The company said so far this year it has recorded over two million hacking attempts and more than 11,000 unique IP addresses from which malware for IoT devices was downloaded. Vietnam came first in this list with over 2,100 unique IPs.

IoT devices are becoming more popular around the world. There's an estimated six billion of them, and the number is projected to hit 20 billion or more by 2020.

Experts have urged users to take cybersecurity risks seriously when connecting these devices to the internet.

 
 
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