The hackers tried to disrupt the World Health Organization's corona vaccine distribution

Boston, Ta. Thursday, December 3, 2020

IBM Security Researchers have discovered that phishing mail was used as part of a cyber espionage campaign to obtain information about the World Health Organization's efforts to provide corona vaccine to developing countries.

"We do not have specific information on who is behind the campaign, which began in September, or whether it was successful," the researchers said. But the precision with which the targets were set for the operation and the way in which their traces have been erased show that this is the work of a country, the researchers said in a block post.

The campaign targeted Germany, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan. These countries had the potential to engage in the work of developing the cold chain required for the distribution of corona vaccine.

IBM said that where three billion people live and have insufficient storage to store the corona vaccine at the required temperature, uninterrupted refrigeration is needed to deliver the vaccine. Claire Zaboiva, an IBM analyst involved in the search for the phishing attempt, said it was an attempt to leak similar information to the outline of providing the most important vaccine worldwide.

People involved in this operation may be motivated by a desire to know the entire refrigeration process, how the vaccine will be stored and how it will be distributed, and it is possible that they did this to mimic it, Nick Rossman said.

Rossman is the head of IBM's Global Threat Intelligence team. Or they may be planning to disrupt the vaccine distribution system, Rossman added. A bogus email was sent to officials involved with the Gavi Vaccine Alliance and the Covax program set up by the World Health Organization and other UN agencies.

The email appears to have been sent by an executive at Hair Biomedical, China's leading colch chain supplier. Attachments were sent to this phishing email asking the email recipient to provide information that could be used to find out important details of vaccine delivery.

Microsoft also caught such a failed attempt by Russian and North Korean hackers last month. In which he tried to steal data from leading companies and vaccine researchers. No details were given on how successful he was in the attempt or how many cuts he made.