Cybercriminals put over 160M records of Vietnamese financial data up for sale: Report

By Saadet Gokce

ISTANBUL (AA) — Cybercriminals have put more than 160 million records of Vietnamese financial data up for sale after hacking the Southeast Asian nation's financial system, according to a report by the Cybernews news outlet.

The cybercrime group ShinyHunters claims to have hacked highly sensitive financial records from Vietnam’s National Credit Information Center (CIC), one of the country’s four licensed credit information service providers, according to the report published on Monday.

The State Bank of Vietnam has said that the incident is being investigated by the CIC.

The bank added that illegal collection, processing, exploitation, use, exchange, and provision of credit information would be handled according to the law.

Reportedly, around 160 million records of data, belonging to citizens, are on sale.

Vietnam has a population of 101.5 million, showing that the dataset being sold potentially includes historical or multiple records per individual.

The "negotiable price" for the data is $175,000.

The stolen data reportedly includes full names and personal details, credit and payment histories, income and debt records, credit card information (some encrypted), military, government, and tax IDs, as well as risk-analysis data.

Vietnam’s State Bank, however, stated that CIC and similar providers do not collect information on bank accounts, balances, savings, payment accounts, card numbers, CVV/CVC codes, or transaction histories.

The hackers claim they exploited a known but unpatched flaw in CIC’s end-of-life software.