Hackers Modify Stolen Regulatory Data to Sow Mistrust of COVID-19 Vaccine

Last month, the makers of one of the most promising coronavirus vaccines reported that hackers stole confidential documents they submitted to a European Union regulator. On Friday, it emerged that the hackers had tampered with some of the content of the submissions and posted them on the Internet.

Studies on the BNT162b2 vaccine jointly developed by pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech have shown that it is 95% effective in preventing COVID-19 and that it is still effective for all ages, sex, race and condition. ethnicity. Despite an almost universal consensus among scientists that the vaccine is safe, some critics have expressed concern that this is not the case. Hackers appear to be trying to stoke these unmet concerns.

The data illegally accessed by the hackers “included internal / confidential emails from November relating to the COVID-19 vaccine evaluation processes,” the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency said in a statement. “Some of the correspondence was manipulated by the authors prior to publication in a way that could undermine confidence in vaccines.”

Friday’s statement did not say where the documents had been posted or how they were forged. An EMA spokesperson said in an email that: “We have seen that some of the correspondence has not been published in its original integrity and form and / or with comments or additions of the authors. ” She refused to elaborate. Pfizer officials declined to comment. BioNTech representatives could not be contacted immediately.

According to research by Empoli, the Italian security firm Yarix, more than 33 megabytes of data from the EMA hack was posted to a well-known forum on the dark website in late December. The dark web post, titled “Amazing Fraud! Evil Pfffizer! Fake vaccines! Included a link to a forum on a Russian-language website.

“There is not certain evidence to confirm that the data recovered is only part of the leak or if it actually includes all of the data stolen during the breach,” the Yarix post, which was published on Monday. , read after being executed through Google Translate. “On the other hand, the intention behind the cybercriminals’ leak is certain: to significantly damage the reputation and credibility of EMA and Pfizer.”

Confidential COVID-19 vaccine data has been a hot commodity for hackers since the start of the pandemic. The EMA disclosure is among the first – if not the Documents on vaccines viewed for the first time have been published.