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Small Countries’ New Weapon Against Goliaths: Hacking - The New York Times

posted onMay 15, 2017
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Article snippet: HONG KONG — Hackers in Vietnam have been attacking foreign companies and other targets for years, seeking information and using tactics that suggest links to the Vietnamese government, a cybersecurity company said Monday. The findings, laid out in a report released by the company, FireEye, come as companies and experts look beyond traditional sources of attacks like China and Russia to deal with new or rising threats. Smaller countries are now trying their hand at hacking, experts say, as they seek to follow dissidents, undermine enemies or comb corporate files for trade secrets. FireEye, a company based in California that deals with large network breaches, said it had watched a Vietnamese group known as OceanLotus target foreign companies in the manufacturing, hospitality and consumer products sectors since at least 2014. While identifying hackers or the governments that might back them can be difficult, FireEye said OceanLotus had used tactics similar to those in attacks previously identified by experts as having targeted Vietnamese dissidents, journalists and governments at odds with the country. The OceanLotus group “accessed personnel details and other data from multiple victim organizations that would be of very little use to any party other than the Vietnamese government,” said Nick Carr, a security expert at FireEye and the primary author of the report. Le Thi Thu Hang, a spokeswoman for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry, called the findings of the report “... Link to the full article to read more

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