Are China, Russia and Iran trying to steal US Covid vaccine? Bombshell report lifts lid on major spy operation
Last month, it was reported by the American intelligence community that countries like Russia, China and Iran were trying to influence the upcoming presidential election with different targets to accomplish. And now, a new report has claimed that spies from those three nations were targeting US biotech and research universities to steal data for the coronavirus vaccine. The deadly disease has affected more than 27 million people across the planet and claimed nearly 189,000 lives.
According to the New York Times, Chinese intelligence hackers tried to steal information from the University of North Carolina and other schools that focus on Covid-19 research since their data protections are less strong than the pharmaceutical companies. Russian spies, on the other hand, were trying to get the key data from American universities and agencies in Canada and Britain, as per the espionage efforts detected by British electronic survey body GCHQ that monitors international fiber-optic cables. Iran was, too, reportedly trying to steal vaccine research intensely.
These threats have made the US and British intelligence to track efforts from various countries that are allegedly spying on the vaccine research to deal with the fast-spreading disease. While the US has seen the most number of affected (6.2 million) and deaths (188,000 plus), Russia has seen a little over a million positive cases and over 17,000 deaths. In China, where the pandemic reportedly originated towards the end last year, more than 90,000 have been affected while 4,730 have died. Iran has seen more than 386,000 cases of infection while 22,000 have died.
While some of the American biotech firms that have been targeted include names like Gilead Sciences, Novavax and Moderna, no corporation or university has yet revealed any instances of data theft through public hacking, officials have said. However, according to one government official, some of the hacking efforts penetrated defenses to reach inside computer networks. Two groups of hackers, one each from China and Russia, were identified publicly.
The US is now heightening the protection of universities and corporations carrying out the advanced work while Nato, which generally tracks Russia’s tank movement and terrorist cells, is assessing the Kremlin’s moves to steal the vaccine research, a Western official having the knowledge of the intelligence said, the NYT report added.
“It would be surprising if they were not trying to steal the most valuable biomedical research going on right now,” the report quoted top Justice Department official John C Demers as saying about China at an event held in August by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Valuable from a financial point of view and invaluable from a geopolitical point of view,” he said.
The report also said that the ongoing race and attempts to spy on vaccine research reminds one of the space race when the erstwhile Soviet Union and the US used spying tactics when the other side looked to achieve a milestone. However, while the space race of the Cold War era was not time-bound, the race to secure data on coronavirus treatments is more urgent since the outbreak has not stopped spreading.
China's hacking efforts were more complex
China’s hacking efforts have been complex, according to the report. The American intelligence learned about Beijing’s ploy in early February, as per the current and former American officials. China has also been using information from the World Health Organization to guide its spying efforts in the West and tried hacking into various universities, including the University of North Carolina.
China also carried out “multiple intrusions” more than what the justice department revealed in a July indictment, which accused two hackers of working on behalf of the Asian country’s Ministry of State Security spy service for vaccine information and research from the US’s biotechnology firms. The same month, the Donald Trump administration asked China to shut its consulate in Houston after the latter used it as an outpost to target the city’s medical experts, according to the FBI.
GCHQ, meanwhile, came to know about the Russian hacking efforts. In July, intelligence agencies from the US, UK and Canada said a Russian group called Cozy Bear concentrated on gathering research from Oxford University and its pharmaceutical partner AstraZeneca. Cozy Bear was one of the hacking groups that broke into Democratic computer servers in 2016.