More than 40 vulnerabilities discovered in cyber security exercise

On May 12, the National Cyber Security Association announced that the National Cyber Security Incident Response and Remediation Alliance had successfully organized its first live-fire exercise.

During 1 week of continuous 24/7 attack and defense, more than 40 vulnerability reports were sent to the Organizing Committee by participating teams, many of which were considered "very valuable" to improve the defense capabilities of the target system's owner.

The process of finding errors and fixing vulnerabilities is done in real-time to ensure service security and avoid possible exploitation risks.

Established in December 2024, the National Cyber Security Incident Response and Remediation Alliance has continuously implemented many information sharing and professional cooperation programs to fulfill the mission of ensuring cybersecurity of critical information systems .

In particular, regular combat exercises are the core task of the Alliance, aiming to ensure readiness and smooth coordination among members when an incident occurs.

The first exercise took place from April 17 to April 23, 2025. The exercise was conducted in a real combat format, with members divided into two groups: Attack (Red Team) and Defense (Blue Team). The task of the attack team was to exploit system vulnerabilities without warning, continuously for 24 hours a day. Meanwhile, the defense team needed to detect and prevent these attacks. The target system chosen was a real system, providing services to the outside.

Speaking at the Summary Ceremony, drawing lessons from the exercise, Lieutenant Colonel Le Xuan Thuy - Director of the National Cyber Security Center, Head of the Exercise Organizing Committee, assessed that the exercise process showed the readiness of the engineers and experts in the Alliance.

"This is a quality resource with a high sense of responsibility, ready to contribute efforts, intelligence, and experience to the common task. If gathered and united, it will form a powerful 'army', capable of responding to and protecting the security and safety of key national information systems against cyber attacks, under the coordination of the state management agency, the Department of Cyber Security and Prevention of High-Tech Crime - Ministry of Public Security ," said Mr. Thuy.

According to the Organizing Committee, the highest goal of the Drill is for members to have the opportunity to improve their knowledge and experience in handling information security and safety incidents, thereby effectively serving their professional work and contributing to the overall development of society and the country.

Specific objectives include: Raising awareness and capacity in ensuring network security, especially in organizing and responding to incidents; Raising the spirit of sharing, ensuring good coordination in performing tasks; Training the ability to think like a hacker to deploy effective network security defense.

Mr. Vu Ngoc Son - Head of Technology Department, National Cyber Security Association said: "The competing teams all have good expertise and are equal in terms of skills, so the results are quite close. The Organizing Committee quickly discussed and decided to increase the number of awards compared to the original structure to encourage the competing teams. The final results include 01 First Prize, 02 Second Prizes and 03 Third Prizes, with a total prize value of 100 million VND."

The success of the first exercise will be the premise for the Alliance to continue organizing a series of similar activities in the coming time, with increasing scale and quality. The Alliance hopes to create a playground for participating teams to test and improve their defense and response capabilities in today's challenging digital environment.

In particular, the experience from this exercise once again proves: "No system can be absolutely safe," there must always be a plan to overcome and respond to incidents ready./.

(Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/hon-40-lo-hong-duoc-phat-hien-trong-dien-tap-thuc-chien-an-ninh-mang-post1038067.vnp