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, this was discovered on Wednesday. The theft resulted in the perpetrators making close to $4 million in profit.
According to information gathered, 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.
According to state media, the individual from Nam Dinh province used this software to take over two well-known Facebook fan pages for two photo-editing websites, “Art Bay AI” and “Evoto Studio.”
After that, they tricked users into downloading and installing an app that included malware that would infect their devices. In order to enable his team members to take over user accounts on Telegram, Son gathered and sent stolen data back to a server under his control.
The gang made a profit by selling high-value accounts. Other low-value accounts were used to run adverts for selling apparel and other things on e-commerce platforms. The defendants allegedly took $3.8 million. According to Statista, Vietnam had the seventh highest overall number of users in the world as of April, with 75.3 million.
Source: vanguardngr.com
