Security News > 2020 > July > Biomedical orgs working on COVID-19 vaccines open to cyber attacks

In a recently released report by the UK National Cyber Security Centre, whose findings have been backed by Canada's Communications Security Establishment and the US NSA and CISA, the agency has warned about active cyber attacks targeting biomedical organizations that are involved in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

On Friday, BitSight researchers shared the results of a study that looked for detectable security issues at a number of companies who play a big role in the global search for a vaccine, and found compromised systems, open ports, vulnerabilities and web application security issues.

The agencies believe that the group is after information and intellectual property relating to the development and testing of COVID-19 vaccines.

"In recent attacks, the group conducted basic vulnerability scanning against specific external IP addresses owned by the organisations. The group then deployed public exploits against the vulnerable services identified," the report states.

As many security researchers pointed out, Russian cyber espionage groups aren't the only ones probing these targets, so these organizations should ramp up their security efforts.

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