Microsoft has released an official statement yesterday claiming all the pharmaceutical companies that are involved in the manufacturing of COVID-19 Vaccine are prone to cyber attacks. And the targets include companies operating in countries like Canada, India, France, South Korea and the United States.
The American Tech giant alleges that 3 hacking groups going with the names Strontium, Cerium and Zinc are found to be assigned with the duty of targeting the firms that are into vaccine manufacturing. And among these, Zinc and Strontium that are being backed by North Korea and Russia have broken into the network and stealing vital information related to a UK University indulging in Vaccine development for Corona Virus.
Mainly such hacking groups are using Brute force attacks by targeting a network with millions of automated password logins.
Russia has denied the news of Microsoft and stated that it doesn’t need to indulge in such cyber warfare as its world’s first Sputnik Vaccine used to curb the Wuhan Virus has been detected as 93% efficient.
What’s surprising about this hacking drama is the fact that attackers when failing to break into networks are using ransomware attacks to lock down the entire database from access and found selling the stolen info on dark web for monetary benefits.
COVID-19 Vaccine manufacturer Pfizer Inc is the latest to become a victim of RYUK ransomware in Sept’ 2020. However, the company claims that its research data on the vaccine remained inaccessible to hackers and its vaccine will release with 95% efficacy by the end of December this year.
