According to local media reports, a high school student has been arrested by authorities in Vietnam in connection with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on websites in the country.
According to investigators, the student – who has not been named – encouraged friends to infect computers in internet cafes with malware-infected USB memory sticks, turning them and other PCs into a 1000-strong botnet.
From his personal computer at his house in the central province of Quang Nam, the student is then said to have ordered the army of compromised computers to flood several popular websites, including 5giay.vn and nhatnghe.com, with traffic – effectively blasting them off the internet earlier this month.
According to Tran Van Hoa, head of the official Hi-tech Crime unit (known as C15), the Vietnamese government are hoping to pass a law saying that anyone spreading malware or paralysing computer networks could face up to five years in jail.
Although Vietnam may seem far away for many of us, we all need to realise that botnets, malware and denial-of-service attacks are a truly global problem. It makes no difference to a hacker whether he is using a compromised zombie computer fifty yards from your company or 15,000 miles away to try and swamp your website with traffic.
As individuals, we can all do our part to better police the security of our PCs, and reduce the chances of malware and hackers being able to exploit them for their own criminal ends.
