20 arrested for hacking Facebook accounts in Vietnam

Twenty persons have been taken into custody by Vietnamese police for allegedly stealing and controlling tens of thousands of Facebook accounts both locally and abroad, official media said on Wednesday.

The theft resulted in the perpetrators making close to $4 million in profit. According to VNExpress, the organisation is charged with creating and disseminating malware in order to take over 25,000 valuable company accounts.

The arrests were made by cybersecurity police in April during multiple operations throughout the northern Nam Dinh province, the commercial centre Ho Chi Minh City, and Hanoi.

Dang Dinh Son, a 31-year-old hacker, is thought to be in charge of the organisation. He paid $1,200 for a malicious source to acquire Facebook user accounts.

The man from Nam Dinh province used this malware to take control of two popular Facebook fan pages related to two photo editing sites — “Art Bay AI” and “Evoto Studio”, state media said.

They then lured Facebook users to download and install an application whose malware would infiltrate users’ devices.

Stolen data was collected and transmitted back to a server controlled by Son and then distributed to five groups on Telegram to allow his team members to hijack user accounts.

The high-value Facebook accounts were sold for profit by the gang. Other accounts of lower value were used to run advertisements for selling clothing and other items on e-commerce platforms.

The accused reportedly pocketed $3.8 million.

As of April, Vietnam ranked 7th in the world in terms of total number of Facebook users — 75.3 million — according to Statista.

AFP