Chinese Defaced or Disabled 750 Vietnamese websites in one week

Attackers took advantage of vulnerabilities in server configurations to vandalize government, education and commercial sites, starting in late August.

First, hackers took control of and changed the interfaces of 289 websites on Aug. 28. Another 84 websites were hacked a few days later and an additional 373 on Sep. 4, most of which belonged to businesses.

Victims included eight government sites with .gov.vn domain names and 40 school websites with .edu.vn domains, claimed the hackers, who publicized their actions on the online forum 1937cn.net.

Another major Chinese hacking group, Sky-Eye, assaulted nearly 100 of the websites.

Most of them were small and minimally protected.

The hackers brought the sites down by attacking their shared server.

They exploited “the loopholes in HTTP PUT command on the WebDAV directory,” Thanh Nien reports. “Website managers need to disable the command and use a different directory for protection.”

The incidents occurred during national holidays. Vietnam entered a four-day public holiday starting August 30 to celebrate National Day (September 2), according to Tuoi Tre News.