Vietnam student hacker case: minister says no one above law

Vietnam student hacker case: minister says no one above law

With a Vietnamese school student who hacked into a government website still awaiting punishment, a government minister said the law had to take its course.

Bui Minh Tri, a 12th grade student in the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long, detected a security flaw in the education ministry and broke into it last month, replacing Education Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan’s image with his own. Tri was nabbed later by the police. But in a letter recently to the minister he said his sole intention was to warn the website’s administrators about the security flaw. He also expressed remorse and apologized. Quach Tuan Ngoc, head of the ministry’s Informatics Center, said the website had not been harmed. Ngoc also suggested leniency for the schoolboy. However, asked by Thanh Nien correspondents Wednesday, Minister Nhan said he had yet to decide what action should be taken but said pointedly “no one is above the law”.