August 26, 2010
Vietnamese-language websites known to promote free speech have again been targeted by a coordinated hacker attack.
Administrators of X-cafevn, Dan Luan, and Talawas notified their readers that hackers had broke into their websites on the evening of August 23rd, erased information on the server, and defaced the interface.
This is not the first time such attacks had happened. Earlier this year, X-Cafevn and Dan Luan suffered crippling distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which occurred during the trials of prominent democracy activists.
In Viet Tan’s latest report on cyberattacks in Vietnam, we note that the Vietnamese government is pursuing stricter online censorship by launching unprecedented cyberattacks against websites based outside of the country and employing malicious software to penetrate the computers of webmasters and human rights activists.
In April, the government stepped up efforts to restrict internet freedom by requiring all retail Internet locations in Hanoi to install a server-side application by 2011.
Viet Tan is committed to promoting knowledge of internet security and circumvention methods. We condemn the Hanoi government’s policy to employ Green Dam-like software to stifle free expression online and encourage all advocates of internet freedom to raise awareness about this latest attack.
