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FBI Official Says Foreign Hackers Have Targeted COVID-19 Research 


A pharmacist in Seattle opens a package taken from a freezer that contains a potential vaccine for COVID-19, on the first day of a first-stage safety study clinical trial of the vaccine, March 16, 2020.
A pharmacist in Seattle opens a package taken from a freezer that contains a potential vaccine for COVID-19, on the first day of a first-stage safety study clinical trial of the vaccine, March 16, 2020.

A senior cybersecurity official with the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Thursday that foreign government hackers have broken into companies conducting research into treatments for COVID-19, the sometimes fatal respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Tonya Ugoretz told participants in an online panel discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute that the bureau had recently seen state-backed hackers poking around a series of healthcare and research institutions.

“We certainly have seen reconnaissance activity, and some intrusions, into some of those institutions, especially those that have publicly identified themselves as working on COVID-related research,” she said.

Ugoretz said it made sense for institutions working on promising treatments or a potential vaccine to tout their work publicly. However, she said, “The sad flipside is that it kind of makes them a mark for other nation-states that are interested in gleaning details about what exactly they’re doing and maybe even stealing proprietary information that those institutions have.”

Ugoretz said that state-backed hackers had often targeted biopharmaceutical industry but said “it’s certainly heightened during this crisis.” She did not name specific countries.

Ugoretz did not identify the targeted companies. The FBI did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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