[2] After his early release from prison in 2020, Hieu returned to Vietnam and was recruited by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) under the Ministry of Information and Communications as a technical expert.
[1] From 2007 to 2013, he operated a "massive international hacking and identity theft scheme from his home in Vietnam," in which he stole personally identifiable information (such as names, Social Security numbers, and bank account data) of 200 million U.S.
[7] Hieu obtained this data by hacking companies' databases, then advertised and offered (on two websites he operated, which were later shuttered) the stolen information for purchase by other cybercriminals.
[6][7][2] The Internal Revenue Service has confirmed that 13,673 U.S. citizens, whose stolen PII was sold on Hieu’s websites, have been victimized through the filing of $65 million in fraudulent individual income tax returns.
[17][18] Three months after his return to Vietnam, Hieu posted a photo of his application for the National Cyber Security Monitoring Center (NCSC) on his personal Facebook page on December 3, 2020.
[20] Less than a month after officially starting work for NCSC, Hieu PC publicly demolished two bogus websites, disguised as Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet Air booking services, designed to defraud passengers.
[31] These scams include targeted attacks on business systems,[32] and disinformation regarding information security understanding that creates public confusion.
[41] In December 2021, Meta collaborated with Hieu PC to release a series of films that addressed fraud prevention and guaranteeing consumers' safety when using the internet in Vietnam.
[48] In February 2023, he was handed a certificate by the US carrier Verizon to congratulate him for uncovering two vulnerabilities that might damage data and two faults connected to the web management system of their network.
[49][50] In a meeting with Lao Dong Newspaper, Ngo Minh Hieu remarked that there are often a lot of financial companies and banks that request his cooperation to figure out the system's security weaknesses.
[56] In February 2021, he established the non-profit initiative "ChongLuaDao" (English: Scam Fighters, Vietnamese: Chống Lừa Đảo) together with the related website and add-on extension.
[60] Since returning to Vietnam, he has regularly participated in providing knowledge about information security in cyberspace, helping users avoid harmful websites.
[76][77] Hieu PC and his fanpage on the social network Facebook are presently one of the most noted information security channels when continuously updating preventative measures and associated warnings.
[78][79] The members of the ChongLuaDao initiative not only periodically issue warnings about the status and scams that are happening often,[80][81] but also offer remedies and help for victims of scammers.
[84] ChongLuaDao has partnered with a variety of domestic and international companies throughout its first three years of existence, including Anti-Phishing Working Group,[85] Kaspersky,[86] Cisco, Viettel, CyRadar,[87] Twitter,[88][89] the Law Library (Vietnamese: Thư viện Pháp luật),[90] VinCSS,[91][92] the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA),[93] and Google Chrome.
[99] In 2022, Ngo Minh Hieu founded a project called CyPeace (Vietnamese: Hòa bình Không gian mạng).
The company has initiated several projects with domestic and international partners, including collaborations with the National Innovation Center (NIC) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.
In March 2023, Ngo Minh Hieu represented CyPeace at the Gulf Information Security Expo & Conference (GISEC) in Dubai.
Besides humanitarian projects, Ngo Minh Hieu regularly appears in sharing sessions, discussion shows, seminars, or conferences on information security at home and abroad.