Cybercrime: North Korea hacks Pfizer Inc. for COVID-19 vaccine data, says Seoul

*South Korean spies inform lawmakers that North Korea hacked Pfizer Incorporated for information on its COVID-19 vaccine and treatments

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

Though the country, ironically, has been under self-imposed isolation since closing its borders in January 2020, in trying to protect itself from COVID-19 outbreak, North Korean hackers tried to break into the computer systems of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in a search for information same damaging Coronavirus vaccine and treatment technology

South Korea’s spy agency, which told the country’s lawmakers Tuesday, February 16 said that North Korea hacked Pfizer Incorporated for information on its COVID-19 vaccine and treatments, according to agency report.

The National Intelligence Service released the information Tuesday uring a closed-door briefing to a parliamentary intelligence committee, lawmakers said.

Ha Tae-keung, an opposition lawmaker, who was among the committee members briefed, told reporters in Seoul, that “Pfizer got hacked.”

ConsumerConnect recalls Microsoft Corporation said November 2020, that hackers from North Korea, as well as Russia, had targeted seven prominent companies working on the COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research.

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE later said that documents related to their vaccine development had been targeted in a cyberattack on the European Medicines Agency, adding that none of their own systems had been breached.

While North Korea’s official line is that it has had no cases of COVID-19, officials from the United States, Japan, and others have cast doubts on the claim that the country has escaped the pandemic without a single infection till date, report said.

It was learnt that COVID-19 brings large risk to the impoverished state, whose antiquated medical systems could be easily overwhelmed.

President Kim Jon-Un was reported to have shown his worries about COVID-19 by closing the South Korean borders about a year ago with neighbouring China at the time Pyongyang’s biggest benefactor was the epicentre of the outbreak.

That has slammed the breaks on the little legal trade North Korea has with its main economic partner, pushing the economy toward its largest contraction in more than two decades, according to Fitch Solutions.

North Korea’s trade with China fell 99 percent year-on-year in the final quarter of 2020, the spy agency told South Korean lawmakers.

The regime is set to face a crop shortage of 1 million tonnes this year, with demand expecting to reach 5.5 million tonnes, according to report.