Google frets over Vietnam hacktivist botnet Hackers used malware to establish a botnet in Vietnam as part of an apparently politically motivated attack with loose ties to the Operation Aurora attacks that hit Google and many other blue chip firms late last year, according to new research from McAfee and Google. Unknown miscreants used malware disguised as Vietnamese …
As someone who types Vietnamese, I've never used VPSKey - the application associated with the trojan. I use UniKey. It's free and (better still) it's open source. My wife uses it, and so do many of her friends.
And while I have little love for the Socialist Republic of 'Nam, I'm a little surprised it is playing hardball with botnets. China is an emerging economic superpower - hard to push around. Việt Nam is a lower-middle class economy that depends heavily on exports. I believe it would be susceptible to a boycott. Most of the mediocrities running the country seem to have only two goals at this point: keeping power, and growing their GDP at increasing rates until they think of something better. Botnets don't really assist with the first aim, and they could put the second into jeopardy.
However, I have heard that their Internal Security is under increasing influence from the Chinese government. So perhaps it is Beijing rather than Hà Nội who is pushing the idea of a very Vietnamese botnet.
In my opinion, it's a shame. Most Vietnamese on the street don't like nor trust the Chinese government. After all, the last time they had a war was in 1979. Nor would they love the idea of trojans infecting Western computers. Due to the wave of boat people in the 70s and 80s, many Vietnamese live out of the country - in places like Melbourne, Houston, Montreal and Paris.
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