Chong Lua Dao

ChongLuaDao (Chống Lừa Đảo) is a Vietnamese non-profit cybersecurity organization that helps clients verify the legitimacy of websites and block access to dangerous ones to keep them safe while using the internet. This non-profit project was started by a group of Vietnamese computer security specialists, including Hieu Minh Ngo, a former hacker who is now a technical expert for the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), Le Phuoc Hoa, Nguyen Hoang Thang, and Nguyen Hung.

Beginning
After serving his time in U.S. federal prison for stealing persons' personally identifiable information, hacker Hieu Minh Ngo (also known as HieuPC) left for Vietnam in August 2020. Hieu is considered "one of the most prolific identity thieves ever to grace a federal prison". Returning to Vietnam in the wake of a surge in cybercrime, he has teamed up with a number of other professionals in information security to launch a nonprofit project aimed at preventing cybercrime, alerting users to bad websites, and protecting them from malicious content. Hieu claims that Scam Fighter is a project he has cherished during his time in the US. These are all purportedly part of HieuPC's "rehabilitation" efforts, along with several other community initiatives.

A group of programming and information security specialists composed the core team of the project, including Nguyen Manh Luat, Nguyen Hung, Le Phuoc Hoa, Pham Tien Manh, and Hieu Minh Ngo. The project team has so far included roughly 30 people. Additionally, Duong Ngoc Thai, a former Google engineer and leader of the security and application encryption team, serves as the project's confidential data security counsel for its customers.

Launch and development
The non-profit ChongLuaDao officially started operations on December 27, 2020. The "ChongLuaDao" project, including the website and the plug-in extension, is formally launched by February 2021, with server infrastructure operated by Vietnix Hosting. The plug-in extension has more than 3,500 downloads, more than 70,000 views, and has added more than 1,000 scam websites to the denylist as a result of more than 1,400 user reports in just one day after introduction. They also teamed up with the Anti-Phishing Working Group to share data on cyberthreats. As of October of the same year, the average monthly traffic to the website of ChongLuaDao to test the reliability of another website was about 35,000. They continued to release apps for Android and deploy application development for IOS after the plug-in extension's success on web browser platforms. The application was created using machine learning techniques and often updated datasets that were derived from community contributions. Their chatbot debuted on Facebook Messenger in September. Through this, Facebook users may instantly assess the trustworthiness and security of a website on their phone while chatting live with automated software. Hieu Minh Ngo announced the establishment of the ChongLuaDao Social Enterprise Limited Liability Company (also known as the ChongLuaDao Company) on November 24, 2021, of which he served as CEO.

During the final few months of 2022, Vietnamese users are often deceived by phony applications and websites that steal personal information. Reports of fraudulent banking domains are regularly sent to the ChongLuaDao Project. Their main message was to call for community engagement to protect oneself and those around them. By the start of 2023, ChongLuaDaol had attracted more than 300,000 users to join the community through Telegram, Facebook, and web browser extensions, helping more than 11,000 victims of cyber fraud. In its more than two years of operation, the project has received collaboration and support from significant institutions and tech companies like PhishTank, Meta, and Viettel Cyber Security. A database of 15,000 malicious URLs, including websites that steal personal information, are malicious, or contain malware, has been made available to users. The project discovered more than 3,200 fake websites taking assets and collecting user data in the first quarter of 2023. Additionally, the app has 50,000 regular users, and its widgets and API threat feeds have been included in many other worldwide products, such as those from Kaspersky Anti-Virus software and Cisco (OpenDNS), Viettel, and CyRadar, among other security and cybersecurity firms.

Throughout its operating duration, the project team regularly issued warnings regarding the situation and often occurring fraud, in addition to offering remedies and help to fraud victims. Vietnam had a spike in ransomware assaults and deepfake videos around May 2023. The ChongLuaDao team has provided assistance in a number of counterfeit incidents where users have lost money. They not only alert and assist fraud victims, but they also offer a phone line for free legal assistance. As of now, ChongLuaDao is not only a source of data but also one of the websites, a tool that is frequently offered to readers to warn and report on harmful websites,  as the Vietnamese press issues warnings about cyber fraud.

In September and October 2023, ChongLuaDao conducted two seminars to increase public understanding of information security and fraud forms. This is a unique workshop series for the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. By the end of December of the same year, ChongLuaDao's items had been recognized at the Vietnamese Talent Awards (Nhân tài Đất Việt) in the product category "Contribution to the Community". This prize was given to the initiative shortly before its third anniversary. On January 5, 2024, the third anniversary of the ChongLuaDao project's founding was celebrated in Ho Chi Minh City. Many members from governmental organizations, including the National Cyber Security Center, the Vietnam Blockchain Association, and the Vietnam Information Security Association, as well as major Vietnamese technology businesses, including FPT, VNG, and CMC Cyber Security, attended the event. By the time of the event, ChongLuaDao's member communities had reached 500,000 members on the Facebook platform and 25,000 members in the Telegram group, thereby helping ChongLuaDao detect and handle more than 20,000 malicious websites.

Cooperation
In August 2022, the API of the ChongLuaDao project was incorporated into the social media platform Twitter, one of the top five most-visited websites. As a result, users cannot publish URLs that are denylisted, and Twitter will also notify users when they input these links in tweets and direct messages. ChongLuaDao formally inked an agreement with the Law Library (Thư viện Pháp luật) in October of the same year to collaborate in the implementation of assistance programs to safeguard users from the danger of cyber fraud. The Global Anti-Scam Alliance's research on worldwide internet fraud uses data from two initiatives, one of which is ChongLuaDao. And now, ChongLuaDao is currently a GASA supporting member. In December, the Vietnamese government gave their products the Make in Vietnam prize, making them one of the top 10 items for the digital society.

Today's most popular browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Cốc Cốc, Firefox, and Brave, all support the ChongLuaDao plugin extension. Microsoft and Opera systems proceeded to stop users from accessing the fraudulent site after receiving data from ChongLuaDao. On March 29, 2023, ChongLuaDao and Top CV worked together to analyze businesses and recruitment data in order to identify, stop, and alert users to various types of recruiting team fraud, safeguard the interests of employees, and other legitimate businesses. A strategic data sharing cooperation between Chong Lua Dao and AI SPERA, the creator of the Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) search engine Criminal IP, was launched on June 7, 2023. Together, they work to improve cybersecurity efforts throughout the world and make the internet a safer place for both people and companies.

At the end of August 2023, the Authority of Information Security of Vietnam, the FIDO Alliance, and VinCSS co-hosted the first FIDO APAC Summit in Vietnam. With the involvement of several corporate executives and specialists in the sectors of technology and cybersecurity, the conference was held over the course of three days in Nha Trang under the topic "Connecting for a Safer Digital Future: Passwordless Authentication in the APAC Region." At the event, ChongLuaDao and network services company VinCSS signed a partnership agreement with the goal of engaging in a number of joint activities together, including education to increase community awareness, the deployment of technology solutions for identification and security authentication, and assisting Vietnam in bolstering its digital space defense capabilities and reducing the risk of becoming a target of international cybercriminals.

In November of that same year, the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) released a report about scams in Asian nations, including Vietnam. The authors of this report are ChongLuaDao, Gogolook, and GASA. The report's contents indicate that ChongLuaDao is a significant partner in the data collection process about scams in Vietnam. Also around this time, ChongLuaDao and GASA collaborated to issue a report about scams in Vietnam in 2023. The data provided in the two reports piqued the interest of the Vietnamese media as soon as it was revealed,  and continued to be discussed following ChongLuaDao's celebration of its third anniversary of project planning. During the celebration, ChongLuaDao also revealed that the project's API has been directly included in Google Chrome, one of the most widely used web browsers available today, with the intention of providing users with automatic protection from ChongLuaDao data sets without requiring any further work on their part.

Activity
The following are a few activities and events that the ChongLuaDao has dispatched members to represent at both domestically and abroad:

Founder

 * Hieu Minh Ngo: cyber security specialist.
 * Nguyen Hung: CMO of Vietnix Hosting and the admin of Sinh viên IT (IT Students) group on Facebook.
 * Le Phuoc Hoa: former technical expert at Vietguys.
 * Nguyen Hoang Thang.

Others

 * Duong Hong Phuc: software development engineer.
 * Tran Uoc Chi: designer.
 * Nguyen Manh Luat: former security engineer for Microsoft and Tencent, CEO of CyberJutsu.
 * Pham Tien Manh: security researcher at OWASP was once honored by Facebook as one of 100 security experts in 2019.
 * Nguyen Trong Dai: cyber threat hunter, former National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) cyber security specialist.
 * Duong Tieu Dong: high school student, was recognized by Microsoft for helping them increase the security of their online service.
 * Nguyen Hong Hao: cyber threat hunter.
 * Kent Juno: former Technical Support Manager at Dell Technologies Malaysia.
 * Ta Cong Son: AI research and development expert.
 * Pham Le Duy.
 * Tiet Le Bao Khanh.