Attack on AstraZeneca: Do crackers want the vaccine?

The problems at AstraZeneca are not only related to the errors that emerged in the experimental phase of the anti-Covid vaccine that hopefully will arrive on the European market within the next few months: during the experimental phase, in fact, there would have been high pressure also from the point of view of cybersecurity, with proven attempts to access research by crackers who are now linked to North Korean environments.

Attack on AstraZeneca

That the problem was concrete was well known by now for some time, with the first accusations towards the East coming from the United States (but for this reason weakened, being the acrimony with the East at the center of the tense US electoral campaign). In Europe too, the alarm had risen and now Korean crackers are attempting to access AstraZeneca's systems in order to presumably try to get hold of fundamental information for the development of the vaccine that the group was openly working on. >
The value of similar information would be very high, both from an economic and a geopolitical point of view. Inevitable involvement of state crackers, therefore, on the chessboard of a digital cold war that has been dragging on for years with growing tensions. The advent of the pandemic could only direct efforts in this direction, but at the moment the risks seem to have been contained.

The attempt would have gone through staff members reached via LinkedIn and WhatsApp, sending malicious documents in the form of resumes to try to install software on their respective PCs. The high attention in progress has made it possible to stop this type of approach in the bud (the stakes are too high), while from Pyongyang, at the moment, no positions have come that go beyond the mere official denial of an involvement.