The US technology company IBM warned this Thursday that it has detected a campaign of “high precision” cyber attacks against the cold chain that should serve to facilitate the distribution of vaccines against covid-19.
The company released the results of an investigation carried out by its IBM Security X-Force anti-crime department, according to which the campaign began in September 2020 and affected five countries: Germany, Italy, Korea South, the Czech Republic and Taiwan, in addition to the European Commission (EC).
The focus was partner organizations with Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance’s Cold Chain Equipment Optimization Platform (CCEOP) program, since vaccines, such as those developed by Pfizer and Moderna, have to be stored at temperatures of 70 Under zero grades.
“Although a firm attribution could not be established for this campaign, the precise targeting of executives and key global organizations has the potential hallmarks of an action sponsored by some State, ” they noted from IBM in relation to authorship.
The targets of these orchestrated attacks included the EC’s Directorate General for Taxation and Customs Union, as well as organizations within the energy, manufacturing, website and software creation, and internet security solutions sectors.
The method used by the hackers was to impersonate a key person of a Chinese biomedical company to carry out “spear-phishing” attacks , that is, to send emails with a false sender, but that the receiver thinks he recognizes and that takes you to a web page loaded with malicious content or “malware”.
The information to which the “hackers “They were seeking access – although it is unknown for the moment whether the operations were successful or not – had to do with the transportation and distribution of vaccines , IBM said.
