Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the cyber threat landscape in Vietnam. A new cybersecurity report reveals that 46% of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks targeting Vietnamese systems in 2025 involved AI technologies, highlighting a growing shift toward automated and more sophisticated cybercrime.
According to the Vietnam Security Summit Cybersecurity Report 2025 by VSEC, a cybersecurity firm under G Group, AI played a role in roughly 117,000 DDoS attacks recorded in Vietnam last year.
The findings mirror a global trend: cybercriminals are increasingly using AI tools to scale attacks faster, automate reconnaissance, and improve success rates.
What DDoS Attacks Do — and Why They Matter
A DDoS attack works by flooding a website, server, or network with massive volumes of internet traffic, overwhelming systems and causing services to slow down or crash.
For businesses and governments, such attacks can lead to:
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Website outages
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Financial losses
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Service disruptions
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Reputational damage
When combined with AI, these attacks can become more adaptive and harder to detect.
AI Is Making Cyberattacks Faster and More Effective
According to the report, AI now assists attackers throughout multiple stages of cyber operations, including:
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Automated data gathering
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Identifying software vulnerabilities
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Generating exploit tools
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Crafting personalized phishing messages
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Expanding access inside compromised systems
“Attackers are using AI to increase both speed and effectiveness,” said Phan Hoang Giap, deputy CEO and CTO of VSEC.
“If organizations rely only on manual response methods, it becomes extremely difficult to keep up.”
A Global Surge in AI-Powered Cybercrime
The rise of AI-driven cyberattacks is not limited to Vietnam.
Globally, more than 28 million cyberattacks using AI were recorded in 2025, representing a 72% increase from the previous year.
These attacks are also proving more successful:
The technology is also increasingly used in online scams and fraud campaigns, which have grown sharply across Southeast Asia.
Security Teams Struggling to Keep Up
As threats grow more complex, cybersecurity teams are facing mounting pressure.
The report found that:
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90% of Security Operations Centers (SOCs) have backlog issues
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66% cannot respond to alerts in time
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70% of junior analysts leave their jobs within three years
At the same time, many organizations must process more than 10,000 cybersecurity alerts every day.
AI May Also Be the Solution
While AI is empowering attackers, it is also becoming a key tool for defense.
According to the report, integrating AI and automation into security operations can:
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Reduce incident detection and response times by 33–43%
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Automatically prioritize security alerts
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Suggest context-based response actions
This can significantly reduce workload for cybersecurity teams.
But AI Isn’t a Silver Bullet
Experts caution that AI alone cannot solve cybersecurity challenges.
Without:
organizations may end up spending more without achieving stronger security.
Additionally, AI systems themselves can become targets of cyberattacks through techniques such as:
A $10 Trillion Global Cybercrime Economy
The stakes are enormous.
According to cybersecurity research from Cybersecurity Ventures and SentinelOne, global cybercrime caused $10.5 trillion in damages in 2025, effectively making it the world’s third-largest economy if measured as a country.
On average, cybercrime now costs $333,000 every minute worldwide.
Meanwhile, data breaches affected more than 16 billion online accounts last year, including accounts linked to major platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Apple.
As AI technology continues to evolve, cybersecurity experts warn that the battle between attackers and defenders is increasingly becoming an AI arms race.
Source: Vietnam Insider