VietNamNet Bridge – The Bach Khoa Anti-virus Center (BKAV), Vietnam’s leading internet security firm, said that errors occurred when accessing Google.com.vn and the Google’s DNS (domain name system) on February 23.

Millions of Vietnamese could not access google.com.vn on noon at February 23. Instead of the interface for information search, they saw an image of a young man who seemed to show off his iPhone, and the notice that the website had been hacked by Lizard Squad.

Lizard Squad is a black-hat hacking group, known for its claims of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to disrupt services related to gaming.

The error was confirmed by BKAV, which said the unfamiliar interface appeared when people tried to search google.com.vn and it did not automatically change into  https://google.com.vn as usual.

When users tried to access with https (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) by adding “s” to the address, they saw the notice “Your connection is not private. Attackers might be trying to steal your information from www.google.com.vn.”

The same thing occurred with smart phones.

In principle, the trouble occurs when a digital certificate of the domain name does not coincide with the domain name.

Users did not meet the problem accessing google.com, the Google’s international domain name.

BKAV’s engineers found the IP address “104.27.143.97” when tracking down the domain name.

The website only returned to normal conditions at 2 pm on February 23. When BKAV’s engineers checked Google.com.vn, they saw “74.125.23.94”, the IP address of Google.

BKAV’s deputy chair Ngo Tuan Anh said on Buu Dien on the same day that the website’s interface changed because Google’s DNS had been tampered with.

The Vietnam Internet Network Information Center (VNNIC) under the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC), which is in charge of allocating “.vn” domain names, said there had been no attack on national DNS which manages “.vn” domain names, including the national DNS servers in Vietnam and elsewhere around the globe, and the domain name registration management system.

An official of the center on February 24 affirmed that the system still provides services as usual and can give answers all queries.

The official confirmed that at 11.54 am on February 23, two of the three DNS server addresses that managed Google’s Google.com.vn were changed from “ns1.google.com” and “ns2.google.com” to “dan.ns.cloudflare.com” and “irma.ns.cloudflare.com”.

These are the two of the DNS Hosting servers of Cloudflare, a well-known cloud computing service provider.

VNNIC said the error affected all access to google.com.vn. Access to the third address “ns3.google.com” was successful.

Thanh Lich