HANOI: Vietnam had the highest number of phishing attacks among South East Asian nations that targeted small businesses in the first six months of the year.
Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab said in a report released on Tuesday that there were more than 1.6 million attacks on small- and medium-sized businesses with 50 to 250 employees in the region.
This is up by 39 per cent compared with last year, reports Vn Express newsportal.
It said Vietnam accounted for 464,300 cases, followed by Indonesia (406,200) and Malaysia (269,500).
Singapore had the least number of cyberattacks although its figures were up by 60.5 per cent.
The report also said that worldwide, Brazil was top on the list followed by Russia, France, Columbia and the United States.
The most common scams included baiting people with information about Covid-19, face mask scams, donations for vaccine research and offering relief payments.
The report also mentioned common phishing tricks, such as evaluating job performance, important announcements from administrators, requesting emergency password checks and urgent press releases.
Kaspersky's general manager for Southeast Asia Yeo Siang Tiong said the surge in attacks in Southeast Asia was due to the fact that many companies let employees work from home since the end of March, resulting in a large number of users clicking on infected links or attachments.
Vietnam's Department of Information Security said the country recorded 2,017 cyberattacks on its information systems in the first half of the year, down about 27 per cent compared with last year.
Vietnam has proposed amendments to a law on advertising that will require international advertising service providers to block and remove illegal contents when demanded by authorities.
The Information and Communications Ministry said this was to make clearer the responsibilities of advertisers and advertising service providers, such as Facebook and Google.
With Google and Facebook accounting for 70 per cent of online advertising in the country, the amendments aim to streamline crossborder advertising.