In the early hours of July 27, a reader contacted the hotline of VietNamNet, reporting that the website of the Computing and Data Transmission Company (VDC) at http://home.vnn.vn showed signs of a hacker intrusion.
Specifically, in the link sent via email, a reader named Nam indicated that when accessing the address http://home.vnn.vn/scripts/inc/guanyu.html, he saw an image of the legendary general Guan Yu (from the historical novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”) along with the hacker’s nickname, YM. Nam mentioned that he received this link through a mass message from friends on Yahoo Messenger.
According to VietNamNet’s initial assessment, this appears to be a white-hat hacker who accessed VDC’s server system but did not have malicious intent; instead, the hacker aimed to warn the website management about their security vulnerabilities. The hacker also left a message stating, “I’m a Newbie,” implying self-identification as a beginner in security and hacking.
Nam also reported that he contacted VDC that same night, and the company was investigating the cause. By 9 AM on July 27, the image of Guan Yu left by the hacker had been removed.
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Image left by the hacker at the link http://home.vnn.vn/scripts/inc/guanyu.html |
After receiving the information, VietNamNet contacted a technical expert from VDC to verify the incident. The expert stated: “After the technical department of VDC reviewed and checked the system log files, it is initially assessed that this may be a misused administrative privilege by a customer using web hosting services from VDC. The link that the hacker accessed and placed the defaced image has a small scope and does not significantly impact VDC’s server system. The entire database system of VDC remains well secured and unaffected.”
More than a week prior, on the afternoon of July 17, the website of VnMedia (part of VDC) was also down for several hours due to signs of a hacker intrusion into the content management system, where an image was uploaded displaying the English transliteration of the name Guan Yu (the original name of Guan Vân Trường). By the end of the day, the VnMedia website was back to normal operation.
Huy Phong
