Slashdot Mirror
Cyberattackers Hijack Screens at Two Vietnam Airports, Broadcast Political Messages (washingtontimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an article from the Washington Times:
Hackers on Friday successfully pulled off cyberattacks against Vietnam's two largest airports and the nation's flag carrier, Vietnam Airlines. The attacks -- attributed to a Chinese hacking group known as 1937CN -- ultimately failed to cause any significant security issues or air traffic control problems, Vice Minister of Transport Nguyen Nhat told local media. Nonetheless, the individuals briefly hijacked flight information screens and sound systems inside Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat airports in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, respectively...
Instead of departure and arrival details, the airports' flight screens and speakers broadcast what local media described as anti-Vietnamese and Philippines slogans, in turn prompting authorities to shut down both systems... Vietnam Airlineâ(TM)s website, meanwhile, "was seized control and transferred to a malicious website abroad" and... passenger data pertaining to an undisclosed number of its frequent flyers was published online as well, the airline said in a statement. Local media on Friday said about 100 MB of data concerning roughly 40,000 VMA passengers had been dumped online.
Instead of departure and arrival details, the airports' flight screens and speakers broadcast what local media described as anti-Vietnamese and Philippines slogans, in turn prompting authorities to shut down both systems... Vietnam Airlineâ(TM)s website, meanwhile, "was seized control and transferred to a malicious website abroad" and... passenger data pertaining to an undisclosed number of its frequent flyers was published online as well, the airline said in a statement. Local media on Friday said about 100 MB of data concerning roughly 40,000 VMA passengers had been dumped online.
China has claimed basically all the South China Sea, including parts that are within the Exclusive Economic Zones of other countries. So China has territorial disputes with Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, as well as any nation sending its navy through "Chinese" waters. The China-Philippines dispute is the most prominent one due to the Philippines recent win against China at the Permanent Court of Arbitration as well as the 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff where a Philippine Navy ship directly encountered "Maritime Surveillance" ships from China. China seems to come into conflict the most with the Philippines, probably in part due to the Philippines having a woefully ill-equiped military that is by far the weakest in the region.
What is the current meaning of the "cyber" prefix anyway?
It seems to me it's only used in news and by politicians to imply "something unknown and scary on the Internet".
Why assume it's state-sponsored? The Chinese people are perfectly capable of irrational acts of nationalist vandalism all on their own. (It wasn't the Chinese government that denounced the US, attacked KFC and McDonald's outlets, and smashed iPhones in anger over the China-Philippines sea boundaries ruling.)
So, why would angry Chinese attack a Vietnamese target? Simple enough. Because a number of Vietnamese citizens went out and celebrated the sea boundaries ruling, denouncing China and praising the Philippines (without any state support, and in several cases getting arrested by the Vietnamese government for it).