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The Federation of American Scientists (SAF) said in an article that since the coronavirus vaccine race started, Russia aimed to discredit drugs developed by other laboratories such as Pfizer, BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Moderna.
According to the report, Russian desperation led the government to launch the vaccine on August 11 without data from the phase III experiment. From that moment, Mosc launched a campaign of disinformation and technological attacks, including the use of malware, a virus that infiltrates computers and smartphones, even attacking Latin American media.
News of a possible adverse reaction to the vaccine Oxford-AstraZeneca ignite a wave of social media activity. The volume of shares, mentions and tweets was an ideal entry point for malicious actors to broadcast malware hundreds of thousands of reluctant readers, the report comments.
In the analysis, the SAF make sure these virus they are distributed from the Russian media Sputnik News. Additionally, he noted that the clinical trial break of AstraZeneca marked a key entry point for malware disinformation.
In short, the russian hackers They took advantage of the arrest in the English investigation to sow panic.
According to the agency, the news is broadcast via social networks with cut links, like bit.ly. Shortening the links reduces the number of characters and makes it easier to click, but also hide destination urlexplains the report. In the case of bit.ly, over 7,000 shortened links were detected. Half of them are associated with infected sites.
he malware can offer malicious actors the ability to manipulate web traffic to amplify stories that cast doubt on the effectiveness of certain vaccines, says the SAF.
In a first report, dated September 18, they noted that the attacks they were targeting the British vaccine. Between November 18 and December 1, they analyzed more than 88,000 tweets in Spanish for malware infections and concluded that many published stories contain information about possible complications or are skeptical about it. effectiveness of the virus. vaccine.
Using the virus, The russian hackers can track and identify people interested in vaccinations and in this way redirect the information at will, falling mostly in Sputnik News.
Of the bit.ly links shared more than 25 times, our analysis selected ten at random. Half were infected and the other half were clean links. Among the infected domains were news sites from Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, Peru and Mexico. To deceive the investigators, russian hackers They included Chinese nomenclature and localized the original PI into Hungarian.
The SAF ensures that this manipulation has led some Latin American governments to favor the Russian vaccine. Mexico receives 32 million doses of Sputnik V, while Venezuela and Argentina will receive between 10 and 25 million.
Most worrying is that a malware technique could create a library of interested users in vaccine stories that might be attacked later. If used for micro-targeting, the library would become an effective audience to target with more misinformation about vaccinationscomments on the report.
Currently the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine it is already applied in UK and US. The scientific journal The Lancet assured the Oxford-AstraZeneca, still in development, is safe and effective against the coronavirus. At the same time, the laboratory Modern receive approval quickly.
British newspaper The Times published a few months ago that Mosc drove a campaa this included memes, photos, and even TV reports from countries like India, Brazil and Mexico. The United Kingdom directly accused Russia to mount a global campaign against western vaccines. Anyone who attempts to sabotage the efforts of those trying to develop a vaccine is deeply reprehensible, and it is utterly unacceptable and unjustified, Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said.
Despite strong Russian propaganda, the population did not show confidence in the Sputnik V. According to the Washington Post, when the mass vaccination started, few of them approached to receive the first dose. The fact that Russia I registered the vaccine before I had completed all the trials, I played against the drug.
Some believe that low turnout may change once all the information from the Phase III trial becomes available, but if the trend continues, it would be a blow to Russian interests. To amplify the controversy, the Russian president, Vladimir Poutine, admitted on Friday that the vaccine is not recommended for people over 60, nor for pregnant or breastfeeding women.
Russia has more than 50,000 deaths from covid-19 and over 2.7 million infections, ranked fourth in the global account behind the United States, India and Brazil.
(Source package: Infobae)
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