According to Microsoft, cyber attacks originating from North Korea and Russia are aimed at the companies they conduct research and they are looking for a vaccine for COVID-19.
Microsoft said in a new blog post that the attacks target seven top pharmaceutical companies and researchers in the US, Canada, France, India and South Korea. The post, signed by Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt, states that the majority of the target companies are manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines and have reached the research stage at various stages of clinical trials.
Microsoft did not name the companies or provide details about the information that may have been stolen or tampered with, but said it had alerted the organizations and offered assistance where the attacks were successful.
According to Microsoft, the majority of attacks were blocked by its security protections. The hackers used various methods to carry out the attacks, including brute force, phishing, etc., where they tried to convince the victims that they were World Health Organization recruits looking for job candidates.
With the coronavirus growing globally in a second wave, pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and the BionTech announced that their vaccine in clinical trials was 90% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19. This preliminary data has yet to be examined by independent researchers, but experts called the news "extremely encouraging". And of course such research is worth a fortune.
