​300 state websites have gambling links attached to them

The information was provided by Vu Ngoc Son, technology director of the Vietnam National Cyber Security Technology Corp. (NCS) on Thursday after the company helped several agencies to review their websites.

In specific, when searching for keywords related to betting and gambling on Google, users will find links with the domain “gov.vn” of state agencies and “edu.vn” of the educational units appearing in the first pages of search results.

When clicked, the browser automatically redirects users to malicious websites that request them to provide their full names and phone numbers to create accounts.

A screenshot photo of Vietnamese illegal gambling sites attached to official sites with the “edu.vn” domain.

“With the domains showing them as state agencies and education units, those gambling websites are extremely dangerous if they are used to spread fraudulent information and steal the personal information of users,” Son said.

The Authority of Information Security under the Ministry of Information and Communications said it is aware of the situation and has warned affected agencies but so far, they have yet to handle it thoroughly.

Experts said the domains gov.vn and edu.vn are generally trusted and usually attract a lot of advertisements. Therefore, those behind the gambling rings will do all sorts of tricks they can to attach the links to websites with those domains.