Tens of millions of dollars are bet every day in Vietnam’s Internet black market, officials claimed at a recent conference in Hanoi on cyber security.
Tran Van Hoa, deputy head of the Ministry of Public Security’s High-Tech Crime Fighting Department, said the online operations, which mainly handle gambling on sports, are organized in multiple stages with “close cooperation” between local agents and foreign bookies, making for increasingly complex networks that render investigations by law enforcement difficult to pursue. He said bookies provide and manage gamblers’ accounts and transact money through local agents, bank accounts and unofficial channels. In some cases, local agents receive money to pay gamblers, he said.
Mr Tran also discussed the increasing rate and tempo of cyber-attacks in the country, especially on banks and government agencies.
The Vietnam Information Security Association estimates that more than three-quarters of government Web sites are vulnerable to cyber-attack. A leading content security software service that presented at the conference claimed Vietnam has the largest number of compromised computer servers in the world, attacked mostly from China. Russia is second, India third.