Vietnam govt accused of cyberattacks

The Vietnamese government dismissed what it called "groundless" accusations that it was involved in recent cyberattacks used to intimidate opponents of a mining project in Vietnam. The botnet and malware were discovered by Google and McAfee during an investigation into the causes of the cyberattacks directed at Google and more than 30 US companies late last year, which prompted Google's showdown with the Chinese government over censorship. However, the Vietnamese attacks do not appear to be related to the Google attacks, according to McAfee chief technical officer George Kurtz. Malware disguised as a popular Vietnamese-language keyboard driver was used to create a botnet that targeted blogs rallying against a bauxite mining project in Vietnam, according to blog posts from Google's Neel Mehta and Kurtz.