Promoting the vanguard role in the fight against cybercrime

Captain Le The Van, an officer of Department 3, Department of Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention, began his story with us with a memory that left a strong impression on him and his teammates. It was a project to combat the illegal collection, purchase, and use of personal information and data on cyberspace. In this project, he was the main detective... Captain Le The Van's sharing helped us understand more about the work and the difficulties that he and his teammates had to face every day, every hour.

Captain Le The Van (standing 3rd from right) and his teammates in a youth union activity.

In this project, Captain Le The Van advised, proposed, participated in developing plans, reports, synthesizing, and evaluating documents for the project team; verified, detected, and compiled a list of individuals and organizations involved in the illegal purchase and use of personal information and data on cyberspace; coordinated with professional units to directly participate in the implementation of reconnaissance, verification, secret surveillance, and application of professional tactics to the subjects in the project. At the same time, directly implemented the plan to arrest, search, take statements, and collect evidence for the two main subjects.

With his reconnaissance experience, he and his teammates cleverly and creatively solved the difficult problems of the project to ensure flexibility and efficiency. Through the struggle, all 15 main and related subjects in the project were summoned, urgently searched, and detained in emergency cases; 4.5 billion VND, 18 computers, 19 mobile phones, 13 hard drives, 9 USBs, 11 phone SIMs, 24 online accounts (facebook, zalo, email) were temporarily detained. From there, the activities of appropriating, collecting, selling, and illegally using more than 1,237GB of data containing hundreds of millions of information about individuals and organizations using electricity, education, banking, insurance, business registration, finance, telecommunications services, etc. were clarified, completely neutralizing the activities of collecting, appropriating, and selling data and personal information.

He recalled: "Following the instructions of the leaders, my comrades and I in the unit searched for and screened subjects who were buying and selling personal data on cyberspace. During this process, my teammates and I faced many difficulties. The subjects in the group had many sophisticated tricks to deal with the detection of the authorities such as using virtual information, virtual bank accounts to post information about buying and selling data publicly on associations and groups; creating a series of websites promoting anonymous data buying and selling services, so finding the real information of the subjects was extremely difficult."

From this case, Department 3 reported to leaders at all levels about the current situation of buying and selling personal data, with the consent of leaders at all levels, established a special project, coordinated with professional units of the Ministry of Public Security to focus on fighting and clarifying the largest-scale data appropriation and trading lines in Vietnam at that time.

"Cybercriminals are people who are knowledgeable about information technology; they have taken advantage of the anonymity, rapid spread of cyberspace and the diversity of online social networking services, especially Facebook, YouTube..., to carry out criminal activities. After that, they quickly erase all traces of their activities, making it difficult to collect information and documents. Therefore, when an incident occurs, my teammates and I have to quickly organize measures to verify and track down the criminal group," said Captain Le The Van, talking about the difficulties in fighting cybercrime.

In the past, he and his teammates have deployed cyber security measures to grasp the situation in cyberspace, detect propaganda activities that sabotage ideology, internal sabotage, terrorism, security disruption, riots, etc. From there, they have advised and deployed preventive measures, contributing to political and social stability, ensuring the safety of major political, foreign affairs, economic, cultural and social events of the country.

In two years, he directly advised on 2 reports to the Prime Minister, the Standing Secretariat, 18 reports to the Ministry's leaders and more than 30 documents exchanged with the Public Security of relevant units and localities on organizing the fight, preventing, dismantling, and neutralizing plots and activities using cyberspace to sabotage the Party and the State by hostile, reactionary, and opposing forces at home and abroad. Researching, analyzing, evaluating, and providing forecast reports on the situation of cyber security, cybercrime, especially internal attacks and sabotage activities in cyberspace, contributing to the work of protecting the Party's ideological foundation, fighting and refuting bad and toxic information in cyberspace...

Participated in a project to fight against a group of subjects operating against the Party and the State. As a direct participant in the project, he coordinated with his teammates to synchronously deploy all aspects of professional work; skillfully and creatively used many measures, plans, and professional tactics in verifying, tracking down, and fighting against the subjects. As a result, he coordinated with the police of Khanh Hoa and Dak Lak provinces to arrest and prosecute 5 subjects. Of these, 2 subjects were charged with "Activities aimed at overthrowing the people's government"; 1 subject was charged with "Making, storing, disseminating or propagating information, documents, and items aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam" and 2 subjects were charged with "Abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State, the rights and legitimate interests of organizations and individuals".

In addition, he also participated in the fight against fake news posting. In this group, the subjects created many pages (fanpages), Facebook groups, both public and secret, to share and disseminate information, articles, and videos with bad content; used the online environment to communicate, attract, gather forces, and propagate fabricated, baseless information against the Party, the State, and high-ranking leaders... This information was shared and disseminated quickly and widely, and if not prevented in time, it would seriously affect national security and the reputation of organizations and individuals.

"In the face of the above situation, we have taken a series of professional measures; reviewed thousands of cases of false news; fought and questioned hundreds of subjects. At the same time, we are always on standby to summon and fight against subjects who show signs of taking advantage of the situation, events, and hot issues to sabotage the country and remind those who lack knowledge and fight against subjects who deliberately spread fake news, causing confusion among the masses; synchronously deploy many specific solutions, in order to contribute to maintaining political security, order, and social safety, with high spirit and effort" - Captain Le The Van said.

Promoting the enthusiasm of youth and raising the sense of responsibility of a union member, Captain Le The Van has been exemplary, proactive and proactive in participating in activities and union movements launched by the union branch and the Youth Union of the Department of Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention. Typically, he participated in responding to, organizing and maintaining the "Green Sunday" activities with the participation of hundreds of union members; registered to take on the task of planting and taking care of trees; participated in donating to the funds "Repaying gratitude", "Prevention of natural disasters", "Border and island affection"...

With his achievements, Captain Le The Van has been awarded Certificates of Merit by the Minister of Public Security many times; from 2020 to 2023 up to now, he has continuously achieved the title of "Emulation Fighter at the grassroots level"; in which, he was honored to be awarded the title "Emulation Fighter of the entire Public Security Force" by the Ministry of Public Security once.

Source: https://cand.com.vn/Hoat-dong-LL-CAND/phat-huy-vai-tro-xung-kich-trong-dau-tranh-voi-toi-pham-tren-khong-gian-mang-i724178/