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In recent months, Russian and North Korean hackers, backed by governments, have allegedly been trying to steal valuable data on the Covid-19 vaccine from leading pharmaceutical companies and researchers working to find a cure for the disease.



The complaint comes from the technology giant MIcrosoft, according to which most of the attacks detected were unsuccessful.

However, the company did not provide information on how many succeeded or how serious the violations were.



Most of the targets, located in Canada, France, India, South Korea and the United States, were "directly involved in researching vaccines and treatments for Covid-19" at various stages of the clinical trial.



The company identified one of the hacker groups as 'Fancy Bear', the Russian military agents that the UK's National Cyber ​​Security Center identified in July as responsible for the intrusion attempts.

Two others are North Korea's 'Lazarus' group and a group that Microsoft has identified as 'Cerium'.



In a blog post from Microsoft, Vice President of Security Tom Burt says that "most of these attacks have been blocked by the security protections built into our products. We have informed all the organizations targeted and where the attacks have succeeded, we offered help "



The latest



attacks Cyber ​​attacks targeting the healthcare sector and exploiting the pandemic are nothing new, Microsoft recalls, and ransomware (ransom payment requests) have targeted hospitals and healthcare organizations in the United States.



The list of cyberattacks since the beginning of the pandemic include the University Hospital of Brno in the Czech Republic, the hospital system in Paris, the computer systems of the Spanish hospitals, the hospitals in Thailand, the medical clinics in the US state of Texas, a health agency in the US state of Illinois and also international bodies such as the World Health Organization.



In Germany, a woman from Dusseldorf would become the first known victim following a cyber attack on a hospital.