Security News > 2021 > January > EU Regulator: Hackers ‘Manipulated’ Stolen Vaccine Documents
The European Union's drug regulator said Friday that COVID-19 vaccine documents stolen from its servers by hackers have been not only leaked to the web, but "Manipulated."
The European Medicines Agency said that an ongoing investigation showed that hackers obtained emails and documents from November related to the evaluation of experimental coronavirus vaccines.
The agency, which regulates drugs and medicines across the 27-member EU, had troves of confidential COVID-19 data as part of its vaccine approval process.
"Some of the correspondence has been manipulated by the perpetrators prior to publication in a way which could undermine trust in vaccines," the Netherlands-based agency said.
The EMA, which is based in Amsterdam, came under heavy criticism from Germany and other EU member countries in December for not approving vaccines against the virus more quickly.
The agency issued its first recommendation for the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine weeks after the shot received approval in Britain, the United States, Canada and elsewhere.