As coronavirus vaccine research is starting to take off, Russian hackers are allegedly working to steal it, according to officials from the U.K., U.S., and Canada.
Wednesday's joint statement from the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre, the U.S. Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency and National Security Agency, and Canada's Communication Security Establishment said that Russian hackers are carrying out cyberattacks against healthcare organizations and industries to gain information about the current research done to come up with a vaccine for the coronavirus.
The perpetrators of said attacks are reportedly the same group of criminals behind the attacks during the U.S. presidential election in 2016 -- Cozy Bear or APT29.
COVID-19 cases continue to see a spike in many countries across the globe, with more than 13 million confirmed cases and nearly 600,000 deaths. Several countries are getting their outbreaks under control, but the cases continue to increase in America. With a vaccine, there's a huge potential that the pandemic will end, so researchers are racing to develop at least one that would truly work.
As noted by CNET, countries lacking with enough research to develop their own vaccine are allegedly looking to steal information from those whose progress is more defined. The U.S., U.K., and Canada released more details on Thursday, alleging that Russian hackers are using custom malware and phishing attacks against vaccine researchers in their countries.
"It is completely unacceptable that the Russian Intelligence Services are targeting those working to combat the coronavirus pandemic," U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a statement. "While others pursue their selfish interests with reckless behavior, the U.K. and its allies are getting on with the hard work of finding a vaccine and protecting global health."
On Thursday, all three government agencies released an advisory containing information on how hackers attempted to carry out the crime. According to the document, they began the misdeed by scanning for open servers owned by their victims, look for a vulnerability, and exploiting it. It's possible that the hackers gained access by stealing login information through phishing attacks as well.
Russia is not the only country accused of hacking attempts to gain information about coronavirus vaccine research. The FBI in May accused Chinese hackers of the same crime. Security researchers also reportedly found evidence that hackers from Vietnam were targeting the government of China for information on how to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.
The Russian embassy is yet to issue a statement.
