VNDirect, one of Vietnam’s largest brokers, has in recent hours begun the process of restoring its systems after a cyber attack last weekend that forced it to suspend trading transactions.
Few details about the cyberattack were revealed, but VNDirect’s CEO said the attackers encrypted the broker’s data. “VNDirect was attacked by a group of professional hackers who encrypted our company’s data. We have now completed the decryption of the locked data and [are] starting to restore the system,” Nguyen Vu Long, The CEO of VNDirect said this to a local media.
Meanwhile, a government finance official said the attack affected only VNDirect and no other financial organisations. “We don’t see the risk of contagion,” said Pham Hong Son, vice president of Vietnam’s State Securities Commission (SSC) told Reuters.
In a social media post, VNDirect described a four-stage recovery process, starting with customer accounts, which are now complete, followed by the restoration of floor trading and then other financial services.
This is the latest high-profile cyber threat targeting Vietnam’s financial sector. In August 2022 around 50 Vietnamese financial organizations were targeted by a terrorist attack Android Trojan nicknamed GoldDigger.