Microsoft Alleges Hackers From Russia, North-Korea Trying To Steal Covid Vaccine Research Data

The targets are directly involved in researching vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 and are located in Canada, France, India, South Korea and the United States.

(Representative Image/ Getty)

New Delhi: Leading technology firm Microsoft on Friday, in a blog post stated that the company has detected attempts to steal valuable data from the leading pharmaceutical companies and vaccine researchers through the means of hacking by state-backed Russian and North Korean hackers. According to the post, most of the attacks in recent months were unsuccessful, but no data was provided for any successful breach. The US government in July announced criminal charges on China, for allegedly targeting vaccine-makers by the state-backed hackers. According to Microsoft, the targets are directly involved in researching vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 and are located in Canada, France, India, South Korea and the United States. Though the leading tech firm didn’t name any of the targets but said that most had vaccine candidates in various stages of clinical trials. As per the firm’s statement, one of the state-backed hacker they have identified is a group named Fancy Bear, operated by the Russian military agents who Britain’s National Cyber Security Center said in July were behind such intrusion attempts. The two others were North Korea’s Lazarus Group and a group Microsoft calls Cerium. Most of the break-in efforts involved attempts to steal the login credentials of people associated with the targeted organizations. Mentioning more about the state-backed hacker group, the blog stated that North-Korean backed, Lazarus Group posed as job recruiters while Cerium targeted spear-phishing emails that masqueraded as missives from World Health Organization representatives. Brad Smith President of Microsoft coincided with the blog post while appearing in an international forum urged the nations to defend healthcare facilities from these types of cyberattacks. Currently, as many as 321 different vaccine candidates have been researching to find a perfect shot for the deadly COVID-19 disease worldwide, in India alone there are four different vaccine candidates in different stages of clinical trials, but optimism about the COVID-19 vaccine has grown since pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced earlier this week that preliminary data showed its vaccine to be 90 per cent effective.