Russian cyber criminals are trying to hack major organizations dedicated to the investigation of the Coronavirus vaccine, according to the National Center for Cyber Security in the United Kingdom (NCSC), who assured that the hackers would take as victims the laboratories that work for the much desired vaccine, including research centers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The group of hackers, known as APT29, The Dukes or Cozy Bear, would have targeted the intellectual property of the laboratories to steal information using techniques such as «spear phishing«, the strategy is to use the identity of the collaborators of trust to steal valuable information. In addition, it was revealed that the investigation organizations have reported different attacks on the servers and electronic accounts of their employees.
The report presented by the NCSC, the UK’s leading technical authority on cybersecurity and also part of the government’s Communications Headquarters, is supported by partners of the Canadian Communication Security Establishment (CSE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). of the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA).
NCSC Chief Operating Officer, Paul Chichester, announced that Russian hackers would target government, diplomatic, and energy and healthcare entities, adding, «We condemn these despicable attacks against those doing vital work to combat the pandemic of coronavirus”.
For his part, Dominic Raab, UK Foreign Secretary, also condemned the action, «While others pursue their selfish interests with reckless behavior, the UK and its allies continue the hard work of finding a vaccine and protecting global health”.
RUSSIA’S RESPONSE
Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, assured that Russia has no knowledge about cyber criminals who try to steal information from medical research organizations, and stated, “We can say one thing: Russia has nothing to do with these attempts and we do not accept such allegations as well as we do not accept another set of unfounded allegations of interference in the 2019 election”.