The Vietnamese government is on alert in the wake of a string of hacker attacks against a major government-run news web site. The news comes a fortnight after a National Information Security Day organised by Ministry of Information and Communications revealed a national plan to bolster cyber security.

The plan, which will run from 2010 to 2020, has a budget of US$42 million to re-enforce Vietnam’s online infrastructure and put in place a legal framework to crack down on cyber crime.

Nguyen Duc Tuan, Head of the anti-spam group, The Vietnam Emergency Response Team, MIC, told FutureGov Asia Pacific: “MIC has drafted information security regulations, and penal provisions for cybercrime have been issued under the Criminal Code of Vietnam. Assigned government agencies will have the power to investigate security breaches in accordance with the law.”

VNCERT, an MIC agency, is the central government body assigned to handle cyber security cases, with support from the Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Home Affairs.

The targeted news site, VietnamNet.vn, was infiltrated by a hacker who was able to break into the site because of a software security error. All of the data was cleared off the host computer, paralysing the site. Only 80 per cent of the site’s content was recovered.

More than 1000 Vietnamese web sites were hacked last year, and around 800 have been infiltrated so far this year, according to the Vietnamese Internet Security Company. Many Vietnamese sites lack basic security protection, which makes them easy to hack.

Vietnam is 18th in a ranking of the world’s most targeted countries in cyber space, according to a 30- country survey by the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats.