Vietnam‘s third-largest securities broker, VNDirect, faced a significant cyberattack over the weekend, disrupting its operations and impacting the stock markets. Despite efforts to restore services, some functionalities remained inaccessible to investors as of Wednesday. VNDirect announced plans to gradually restore access to its services in four stages, prioritizing customer accounts and concluding with financial products.
The cyberattack led to the temporary suspension of remote trading and online transactions by VNDirect on various stock exchanges until the issue is resolved. Consequently, VNDirect’s share price experienced a notable decline, and transaction volumes on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange decreased by 10% as investors were unable to trade through the affected broker. However, the vice chairman of Vietnam’s State Securities Commission reassured that the attack is not expected to affect other financial institutions, and no other brokers were impacted.
VNDirect’s CEO, Nguyen Vu Long, revealed that the cyberattack was orchestrated by a group of professional hackers who encrypted the company’s data. Despite the disruption, he assured that customers’ assets and data remained unaffected, and efforts were underway to decrypt the blocked data and restore the system. Additionally, several associated companies, including the investment firm IPA and the stock investment fund IPAAM, were also targeted in the cyberattack, leading to their websites being inaccessible.
