Microsoft announced on Saturday that Russia and North Korea Cyberattacks, targeted online accounts at seven companies researching Covid-19 drugs and vaccines. According to Microsoft, the seven are leading pharmaceutical companies and vaccine researchers operating in the U.S., Canada, France, India and South Korea.
According to Microsoft corporate vice president of customer security Tom Burt, Microsoft didn’t name the companies, or provide details about what information may have been stolen or compromised, but reported that the organizations and offered help.
On other hand, the hackers used various methods to attacks including, brute force login attempts to steal login credentials, as well as spear-phishing attacks where the hackers posed as recruiters seeking job candidates, and as representatives of the World Health Organization.
The attacks place an extra burden on drugmakers rushing to develop weapons to fight a virus that has infected close to 53 million people world-wide, including more than 10 million in the U.S., according to data from Johns Hopkins University. More than 1.2 million people have died in the global pandemic.
Moreover, Dapo Akande the nternational law professor at Oxford University , reported that cyberattacks could undermine the integrity of research or even delay clinical trials, who has called for protections in international law against cyberattacks on health-care institutions.
Noteworthy, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their vaccine was 90 % effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials. That preliminary data hasn’t been examined by independent researchers yet, but experts called the news extremely encouraging. And a vaccine candidate from Moderna is expected to release initial data soon, according to Wall Street Journal.
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