The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the EU regulatory body in charge of approving COVID-19 vaccines, said today it was the victim of a cyber-attack. ZDNet has the details:
In a short two-paragraph statement posted on its website today, the agency discloses the security breach but said it couldn’t disclose any details about the intrusion due to an ongoing investigation. EMA is currently in the process of reviewing applications for two COVID-19 vaccines, one from US pharma giant Moderna, and a second developed in a collaboration between BioNTech and Pfizer. An EMA spokesperson did not return a request for comment seeking information if the attack targeted its vaccine approval process or if it was a financially-motivated attack like ransomware. Nonetheless, in a follow-up statement released on its own website, BioNTech said that “some documents relating to the regulatory submission for Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, which has been stored on an EMA server, had been unlawfully accessed” during the attack, confirming that COVID-19 research was most likely the target of the attack.
This seems to be a trend as I’ve covered attacks like this before. Specifically, this one. And you should expect that more attacks like this are inbound. If they aren’t already happening.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
This entry was posted on December 9, 2020 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
EU Regulatory Body Pwned By Hackers Looking For COVID-19 Related Info
The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the EU regulatory body in charge of approving COVID-19 vaccines, said today it was the victim of a cyber-attack. ZDNet has the details:
In a short two-paragraph statement posted on its website today, the agency discloses the security breach but said it couldn’t disclose any details about the intrusion due to an ongoing investigation. EMA is currently in the process of reviewing applications for two COVID-19 vaccines, one from US pharma giant Moderna, and a second developed in a collaboration between BioNTech and Pfizer. An EMA spokesperson did not return a request for comment seeking information if the attack targeted its vaccine approval process or if it was a financially-motivated attack like ransomware. Nonetheless, in a follow-up statement released on its own website, BioNTech said that “some documents relating to the regulatory submission for Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, which has been stored on an EMA server, had been unlawfully accessed” during the attack, confirming that COVID-19 research was most likely the target of the attack.
This seems to be a trend as I’ve covered attacks like this before. Specifically, this one. And you should expect that more attacks like this are inbound. If they aren’t already happening.
Share this:
Like this:
Related
This entry was posted on December 9, 2020 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.