Hackers from Russia are reportedly trying to get their hands on the data around the freshly acquired potential Covid-19 vaccines.
They have now been trying to steal intelligence on vaccines from universities, companies and other health care organizations.
According to news reports, the hackers have been targeting British, Canadian and American organizations that are on the front line of creating coronavirus vaccines.
The three governments mentioned above revealed this on Thursday, July 16 while noting that it could be because of the competition on who will win the battle to contain the virus.
APT29, also known as Cozy Bear the spy group associated with Russian intelligence is said to be behind the attempted hack.
According to New York Times, USA’s National Security Agency reported that these are the same hackers that were involved in the 2016 hacking of the Democratic Party servers.
American intelligence officials have claimed that the Russians are aiming at stealing the research data so as to develop their own vaccine faster without “interfering” other countries’ efforts.
According to New York Times, the cyber spies are using malware and sending fraudulent emails to target organizations’ employees, trying to trick them into turning over the passwords among other security details.
Whereas Russia has denied responsibility, sources indicate that global experts are confident that Russia has to do with the spying.
“We condemn these despicable attacks against those doing vital work to combat the coronavirus pandemic,” Paul Chichester, the director of operations for Britain’s National Cyber Security Center said.
NBC reported that there was no evidence that any data has been stolen although the cyber attacks were noticed from February.