FACEBOOK SAYS HACKERS BACKED BY VIETNAM’S GOVERNMENT ARE LINKED TO IT FIRM
Facebook said it has linked an advanced hacking group widely believed to be sponsored by the government of Vietnam to what’s purported to be a legitimate IT company in that country. The group goes under the monikers APT32 and OceanLotus. Facebook identified Vietnamese IT firm CyberOne Group as being linked to OceanLotus. The group lists an address in Ho Chi Minh city. The naming of CyberOne Group isn’t the first-time researchers have publicly linked a government-backed hacking group to real-world organizations. In 2013, researchers from Mandiant, now a part of security firm FireEye, identified a 12-story office tower in Shanghai, China, as the nerve center for Comment Crew, a hacking group that was responsible for hacks on more than 140 organizations over the previous seven years. The building was the headquarters for the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398. And in 2018, FireEye said that potentially life-threatening malware that tampered with the safety mechanisms of an industrial facility in the Middle East was developed at a research lab in Russia.
