Coronavirus: Russian Hackers Attack Vaccine Researchers

British and Western intelligence services are warning Russia’s APT29 hacking group is targetting Covid-19 vaccine researchers.

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“APT29 has been successfully compromising systems now for over a decade across the globe,” explained Tony Cole, CTO at Attivo Networks. “The pandemic has given them a new and additional target to steal research to meet Russian Intelligence initiatives.”

“It’s unfortunate that an actor such as APT29 with such sophisticated capabilities is still able to simply scan targets for existing known vulnerabilities and then compromise with little effort or use phishing emails to obtain their initial set of credentials,” said Cole.

“Organisations must step up their efforts to counter adversaries targeting them,” he cautioned. “Patching is an imperative that must be met. Instrumentation focused on detection and lateral movement inside the network perimeter and across all endpoints is another imperative since prevention often fails regardless of defensive spending. You can’t prevent all attacks however you must detect them quickly when they do get through your defenses.”

Read the complete article at Silicon.co.uk.