The Ministry of Information and Telecommunications in collaboration with the BKAV Technology Group will organise WhiteHat Drill 05, a network safety rehearsal, on May 9 to tackle the coin-miner virus.

Govt to organise national safety drill against coin-miner virus.

All companies and other organisations around the country can register to take part in the rehearsal for free at WhiteHat.vn/DangKy.

“The enormous profits from cryptocurrencies is the reason for hackers to circulate the coin-miner virus,” Ngo Tuan Anh, deputy chairman in charge of security at BKAV Technology Group, said.

“The situation will worsen in the coming time.”

The rehearsal will include various simulated situations in which networks are infected by the coin-miner virus through the SMB gap.

Teams in the rehearsal must isolate the virus, stop its spread, analyse it to know the origin of the attack, identify exactly which gap has been penetrated, and fix it to avoid further attacks.

The coin-mining virus is becoming increasingly prevalent, with attacks through various gaps to spread it being identified, including in websites, software and social networks.

In March 139,000 computers in Viet Nam were infected by the virus after spreading through online advertisement service Adf.ly to take control of victims’ computers for coin mining.

The virus can infect other computers in a network through the SMB gap. The SMB gap had been exploited by the WannaCry virus which infected 300,000 computers around the world within a few hours last year.

According to BKAV, half of all Vietnamese computers have been infected by viruses through the SMB gap. -- VNS