Russia trying to steal vaccine data, Western nations say
WASHINGTON — Russian hackers are attempting to steal coronavirus vaccine research, the U.S., British and Canadian governments said Thursday, accusing the Kremlin of opening a new front in its spy battles with the West amid the worldwide competition to contain the pandemic.
The National
Security Agency said that a hacking group implicated in the 2016 break-ins into Democratic Party servers has been trying to steal intelligence on vaccines from universities, companies and other health care organizations. The group, associated with Russian intelligence and known as both APT29 and Cozy Bear, has sought to exploit the chaos created by the coronavirus pandemic, officials said.
U.S. intelligence officials said the Russians were aiming to steal research to develop their own vaccine more quickly, not to sabotage other countries’ efforts. There was likely little immediate damage to global public health, cybersecurity experts said.
The Russian espionage nevertheless signals a new kind of competition between Moscow and Washington akin to Cold War spies stealing technological secrets during the space race generations ago.
The Russian hackers have targeted British, Canadian and U.S. organizations using malware and sending fraudulent emails to try to trick their employees into turning over passwords and other security credentials, all in an effort to gain access to the vaccine research as well as information about medical supply chains.
The accusations against Russia were also the latest example of an increasing willingness in recent months by the United States and its closest intelligence allies to publicly accuse foreign adversaries of breaches and cyberattacks. The U.S. government has previously warned about efforts by China and Iran to steal vaccine research.
Attributing such attacks, however, is imprecise, an ambiguity that Moscow takes advantage of in denying responsibility, as it
did Thursday.
Still, government officials as well as outside experts expressed strong confidence that Cozy Bear, controlled by Russia’s elite SVR intelligence agency, was responsible for the attempted intrusions into the virus vaccine research.
“We condemn these despicable attacks against those doing vital work to combat the coronavirus pandemic,” said Paul Chichester, the director of operations for Britain’s National Cyber Security Center.
The head of the center, Ciaran Martin, told NBC News the cyberattacks were first detected in February and that no evidence had emerged that data was stolen.
Government officials would not identify victims of the hackings. But the primary target of the attacks appeared to be Oxford University in Britain and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which have been jointly working on a vaccine, said Robert Hannigan, the former head of GCHQ , the British intelligence agency.
Oxford scientists said Thursday that they had noticed a surprising resemblance between their vaccine approach and the work that Russian scientists had reported.
Though Russia could be seeking to steal the vaccine data to boost its own research, it could also be trying to avoid relying on Western countries for any eventual coronavirus vaccine.
While AstraZeneca has announced it will make the Oxford vaccine available at cost, governments and philanthropies have paid huge sums to the company to secure their place in line, even without any guarantee it will work. The United States has said it will pay up to $1.2 billion to AstraZeneca to fund a clinical trial and secure 300 million doses. Russia could find itself near the back of the line if the vaccine proves successful.
“Russia clearly doesn’t want to disrupt vaccine production, but they don’t want to be dependent on the U.S. or the U.K. for production and discovery of the vaccine,” said Hannigan, now an executive at the BlueVoyant cybersecurity firm. “It not impossible to think Kremlin pride is such that they don’t want that to happen.”
An intense international race is underway to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus that has already killed 580,000 people and upended daily life around the world. More than 155 vaccines are under development, including 23 being tested on humans.