It is understood that hackers have tried to break into the systems of researchers at AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
Responding to the allegations, a spokesperson for the NCSC said:
“Since the outbreak of Covid-19, the National Cyber Security Centre’s top priority has been the cyber security and resilience of the UK’s health sector. This includes ongoing and proactive support to the vaccine research taking place at organisations in the UK, in order to reduce and mitigate the risks of cyber attacks impacting on their vital work.
Working alongside our allies, the NCSC is committed to protecting our most critical assets, the health sector and crucial vaccine research and development against threats.”
Last spring, the NCSC and counterparts in the United States exposed malicious cyber campaigns targeting organisations involved in the coronavirus response.
In July, the UK and its allies exposed Russian attacks on coronavirus vaccine development.
I wondewr how many of these attacks are state sponsored? Attacking our health services at anytime is a direct threat to life and frankly discusting, but to target a vaccine research effort in the middle of a pandemic is particularly low, especially given the open way the UK is developing the vaccine i.e. negotiating at cost charging to developing countries (if I remember rightly).
I know that this tends to go on behind closed doors but I wonder if the British tendency towards ‘privacy’ means we are missing oportunities to effectivbely engage in the propaganda war?
Cheers CR
Do we not retaliate. Just wondering.
We do retaliate and I agree with CR we need to be more “vocal” about it.
Get some propaganda of our own going and engaging further.
So yes its about time we got more offensive against lone hackers and states trying to hack our vital domestic and military services
The issue with retaliation is that you reveal the system backdoors and trapdoors that you are using to conduct an attack. If you use them you lose them because the owner of the system will simply fix them after an attack. You need to balance revealing what you can do against what you are capable of doing. A DOS attack against an adversary State’s email servers is straightforward and more of an embuggerance to let people know you are watching them . However dropping their power grid or gas supply pipeline system …you really want to keep that kind of… Read more »
And still the Brits give contracts to the Chicoms……UGH