Why pharma companies are on hackers’ radar for Covid-19 data

Cybercriminals from Russia, China, Korea and West Asia have targeted pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and government health departments in India to steal Covid-19 related data. Singapore-based threat discovery and cyber intelligent company Cyfirma said that 15 active hacking campaigns are being carried out by seven Russian groups, four Chinese groups, three Korean groups and one from Iran.

Other than India, these groups are targeting countries like the US, UK, Japan, Australia, Italy, South Korea, Germany, Spain, Brazil and Mexico.

Since last year, cyberattacks against corporations have increased as a shift to work from home has increased vulnerabilities in security systems. “In the last six months, we have seen a lot of attention shifting to the healthcare segment. However, now we are seeing a clear trend of state-sponsored hacking groups targeting hospitals, supply chain and pharma companies to steal data related to clinical trials and anything related to Covid-19,” said Kumar Ritesh, founder and CEO, Cyfirma.

Some of the hacking groups include Russia’s APT29. One of their campaigns, called “cold unseco33”, has been active since October 2020 and targets global pharma companies, hospitals working on Covid-19, and authorities in the US, UK, India, Japan, Korea, Spain and Brazil. “Their motivation is exfiltration of sensitive personal, clinical trial information, health care report, customer information, medical product information for geopolitical and financial gain and reputation damage,” said Ritesh.

Some of the pharma companies and hospitals that are on the target list include Divi’s Labs, Sanofi, Dr Reddy’s Labs, Abbott India, Torrent Pharma and All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has told G20 finance ministers that Washington will drop a contentious part of its proposal for reform of global digital taxation rules which had been the main stumbling block to an agreement, the Financial Times reported.

According to the news article The move could unlock longstalled multilateral negotiations at the OECD, which struggled to make progress after the Trump administration first insisted on the “safe harbour” measure in late 2019. The provision would have allowed technology companies to abide by any agreement on a voluntary basis.

On Friday, Yellen said at a meeting of G -20 finance ministers that the US “is no longer advocating for safe harbour implementation”, a US Treasury official told the Financial Times.

The US “will engage robustly to address both pillars of the OECD project, the tax challenges of digitisation and a robust global minimum tax”, the official said.

Another official close to the international tax talks said the US “wants a deal on both pillars [of the proposals] by July . . . the coming few weeks will be critical but the dynamic has never been that positive,” reported.