Researchers warned of risk from cyber attack
Healthcare and medical research staff have been told to protect their computer systems against cyber attack, with security agencies in the UK and US warning that state actors and criminals were seeking to steal and sabotage work on coronavirus.
The UK’S National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued an advisory urging staff to change any passwords to one created using three random words, and to implement two-factor authentication on accounts to reduce the threat of compromises.
The agencies say they have seen a number of “password spraying” attacks, where hackers attempt to access a large number of accounts using commonly known passwords, targeting healthcare organisations and other medical groups.
Bryan Ware, CISA assistant director of cybersecurity, said it was prioritising healthcare organisations and other medical groups involved in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking at the daily coronavirus briefing, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “There are various objectives and motivations that lie behind these attacks, from fraud on the one hand, to espionage, but they tend to be designed to steal bulk personal data, intellectual property and wider information that supports those aims, and they’re often linked with other state actors.
“We expect this kind of predatory, criminal behaviour to continue and to evolve over the coming weeks and months ahead”