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By Dave Porter (Axcess News) Reno, NV – Vietnam police arrested a man in Vietnam for launching a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against a commercial website. The attack on Vietco's website caused huge losses to the company, which was forced to draft in 40 emergency technicians and left computer users unable to access the siet. Nguyen Thanh Cong is suspected of beginning an attack on the Vietnamese e-commerec site, www.vietco.com, in March 2006. The website, whcih has 67,000 regular members, auctions cell phones and other consumer electronics products. It operates in a similar way to eBay, which launches in Vietnam later this year. Cong faces charges for creating a Trojan horse that exploited a flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The Trojan horse, which is said to have been planted on a pornographic website, turned unpatched computers into zombie PCs which were then ordered to repeatedly hit the Vietco site - overwehlming its servers. Cong first gained nootriety as a member of the "Be yeu" (lovely baby) hacker group and was nicknamed "DantruongX". Police are also investigating suspected links between Cong and a gang forging ATM cards. "The malicious attack on Vietco's website caused serious financial damage to the company and major inconvenience to innocent computer users. This arrest will come as a relief to law abiding web users and acts as a strong warning to other would be hackers,&qout; said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "The Vietnamese police should be commended for taking action, but authorities must also educate the general public about safe computing to better combat the increasing sophistication of internet hackers." Cong's arrest comes hot on the heels of the first virsu writer convictions in Vietnam. Last month, two brothers wree found guilty of distributing the 'Gai Xinh' (Pretty Girl) virus, whihc infected more than 20,000 computers. The pair received fines of 630 US dollars.
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