On October 9, major newspapers around the world, including the Washington Post, simultaneously published news that Amnesty International said hackers linked to Vietnam had tried to use social media platforms X and Facebook, to install spyware on the phones of dozens of targets, including US lawmakers, United Nations officials and CNN journalists.
According to Amnesty International investigators, the hacking tool used by Vietnam is extremely powerful – designed to retrieve call and text data from phones – targeting social network accounts, affiliated with Democratic Senators Gary Peters and Chris Murphy, as well as Republican congressman and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul. It is known that many CNN journalists specializing in reporting on East Asian issues were also targeted, however, a CNN spokesperson refused to comment on this issue.
According to the investigation, Vietnamese spies used social network X (formerly known as Twitter), to attempt to entice politicians and others, to access websites designed to install hacking software called Predator. It is known that this software is from Intellexa, an Irish spyware provider.
A separate source told Thoibao.de that in addition to Predator software, the Vietnamese Police also bought Israeli spy software to monitor the entire population.
Using spyware to attack American officials is a way of disrespecting Vietnam’s partners. The software and spy equipment that the Communist government has purchased and used is not proprietary software developed by Vietnam, but software that is sold by suppliers worldwide.
Using this software to spy on people is probably okay, but using it to spy on foreign officials, it will be easily exposed. And in fact, the Communist government of Vietnam has been singled out and condemned for carrying out actions that were considered “slanderous.”
The attack occurred as Vietnamese and US diplomats were negotiating a major cooperation agreement to counter China’s growing influence. This makes some observers suspect that, within the Communist Party of Vietnam, there is some force that do not wants the US and Vietnam to enhance bilateral ties. Currently, in the Communist Party of Vietnam, there exists a force that wants Vietnam to be closer to China than to the US.
Vietnam moving closer to America is beneficial for the people and the country, but China does not like it. For many years, especially since the Chengdu Conference in 1990 until now, China has always controls the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam. However, the recent moves of the Communist Party of Vietnam have made Beijing unhappy, even though General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong sent 300 source officials to China for Mr. Xi to “teach.”
While shaking hands with the US and committing evil acts against the US, it can be seen that there is no unity within the Communist Party of Vietnam. One person strives, another sabotages. Whoever is sabotaging the relationship between Vietnam and the US also understands which country they want Vietnam to be close to.
For a long time, the Communist Party was divided into many warring factions. And it seems that diplomatic relations with China or with the US are also the cause of such conflicts.
Previously, during the period of Vietnam-China relations, culminating in the Border War in 1979, Hoang Van Hoan openly followed China, then defected to China. Currently, there are certainly similar forces in the Communist Party of Vietnam, even though these forces are not weak at all.
It is unclear how the Vietnamese Communist government will react after this cyber espionage case is revealed. Perhaps they remain silent. However, the question is, after being exposed, will they falter or continue this action? Let’s see!
Thoibao.de (Translated)
