Offensive Cyber Capabilities and Public Health Intelligence: Vietnam, APT32, and COVID-19

A suspected Vietnamese state-backed cyber campaign targeted Chinese health authorities.

World governments have run the gamut in approaching the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Democracies and autocracies have shown mixed results, but they have tended to show some overlap in tactics. One report this week, however, highlights a particularly innovative tactic used by one non-democratic state to support its public health response.
Part of the story here is no doubt explained by the broader skepticism among Vietnam’s political elites toward China. In recent years, ties between Hanoi and Beijing have nose-dived, primarily over the South China Sea, where both sides are territorial and maritime claimants.
Where Vietnam and China at the start of the last decade mostly were able to continue economic cooperation and maintain strong party-to-party ties between their ruling communist parties, Hanoi actively mistrusts Beijing today.
Hanoi’s policy response — with robust testing and lockdown measures, among other steps —matches best practices across Asia and the world. Its results — at least according to officially available data — seem to outperform, however.
It’s unclear if the APT32 intrusions may have usefully contributed to the Vietnamese government’s public health response.

This article was written by Ankit Panda

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