The thought of a Coronavirus vaccine has been on everyone’s minds since the early days of the pandemic. To many, the development of the vaccine marks the end of the social distancing days and therefore many people look forward to it. Since May, it seems there has been a global effort to stop the COVID-19 for the good of all people, though recently the global effort seems a little less global.
It seems as though the hacker group Cozy Bear, associated with Russian intelligence has taken the opportunity to attack British, Canadian, and American researchers in an attempt to steal COVID-19 research. It seems they have been using spear-phishing malware in an attempt to steal the research.
The director of operations for Britain’s National Cyber Security Center, Paul Chichester said, “We condemn these despicable attacks against those doing vital work to combat the coronavirus pandemic.” Additionally, Anne Neuberger, the N.S.A.’s cybersecurity director said, “[Cozy Bear] has a long history of targeting governmental, diplomatic, a think-tank, health care, and energy organizations for intelligence gain so we encourage everyone to take this threat seriously and apply the mitigations issued in the advisory.”
The country’s governments have all raised their guards to these attacks, and the research will be more secure now that this threat has been identified. Why a hacking group tied with Russian is attempting to steal potentially life-saving research is still unknown, but this is a global threat and the cybersecurity agencies will treat it as such.
Written by Joseph Nelson
Source:
New York Times: Russian Hackers Trying to Steal Coronavirus Vaccine Research, Intelligence Agencies Say
Image Courtesy of Jernej Furman’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
