Kim Jong-un attempted to hack into Pfizer servers to steal Covid vaccine technology, says South Korea intel
North Korea under Kim Jong-un has been accused of trying to hack US drug manufacturer Pfizer to steal the information related to the coronavirus vaccine. The Sun reported that South Korea's state intelligence agency was quoted by lawmakers who claimed that the rogue nation tried to hack the servers of the pharma giant. MP Ha Tae-keung said after a hearing behind closed doors that Seoul's National Intelligence Service "briefed us that North Korea tried to obtain technology involving the Covid vaccine and treatment by using cyberwarfare to hack into Pfizer".
North Korea has been under self-imposed isolation for the past one year and has claimed no single case of Covid-19, which outside experts do not believe. The country closed all its borders in January 2020 after the outbreak of the pandemic in neighboring China. Earlier, a report in November stated that the impoverished nation had also attempted to hack AstraZeneca. Several sources confirmed to Reuters that hackers from Kim’s region targeted the British–Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company by using bogus WhatsApp and LinkedIn messages.
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At the time, Reuters stated that the hackers while acting as recruiters contacted a number of AstraZeneca workers online with fake job offers. It has been said that they sent documents appearing to be job descriptions filled with malicious code to the targeted people, which were designed to gain access to the victims’ computers. An insider even claimed that the stealing attempt was made to target a “broad set of people”, including employees working on the Covid-19 research. However, the plan never succeeded.
As per reports, North Korea is not new to hacking. In the past, the hermit country has been accused of cyberattacks against Britain. It has been said that the North Korean hacking unit Lazarus Group was behind attacks on the NHS. Even security firm Intel 471 found connections between North Koreans and the Russians in December. The firm saw links between North Korea’s cyber thieves and a Russian-operated malware - malicious software - an operation called TrickBot. It hinted towards a theory that the two nations are sharing cyber weapons between themselves, which could be used against the West.
The report described TrickBot as a "malware-as-a-service offering" - on sale to hackers with the right connections. It is "run by Russian-speaking cybercriminals, that is not openly advertised on any open or invite-only cybercriminal forum or marketplace". In addition, it has been reported that Kim Jong-un’s land openly uses its hacking operations to help fund its nuke program. The United Nations have even claimed that using stealing schemes, North Korea has made $2 billion in three years.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, February 11, US President Joe Biden declared that by the end of July, they will have Covid-19 vaccines for 300 million Americans. "Within three weeks, 'round-the-clock work with so many people standing behind me and in front of me, we've now purchased enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all Americans, and now we're working to get those vaccines into the arms of millions of people,” the 78-year-old said while speaking in Maryland at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Also, a report by CNN stated that around 200 million coronavirus vaccine doses will be delivered by Moderna and Pfizer by the end of July. The companies are expected to deliver 100 million “doses" by the end of May.
