Hackers attacked the European Medicines Agency EMA.
Documents for the corona vaccine from Biontech and Pfizer were the target.
Amsterdam - The
corona vaccine
from
Biontech and Pfizer
is currently being tested by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
The approval process for the vaccine candidate in Europe should be completed by the end of December.
Now the cyber attack.
The agency confirmed on Wednesday evening that documents relating to the application for approval had been
“
illegally
” accessed.
What this means seems unclear at first.
Pfizer
said no systems from
Biontech
or the
pharmaceutical company
itself were attacked.
The EMA initially did not provide any
further
details,
such as the
time of the cyber attack
.
"The agency has swiftly launched a full investigation in close cooperation with law enforcement and other relevant agencies," said an EMA statement.
One day after the cyber attack - on Thursday - the extent is still unclear.
The EMA is silent on the question of who is behind the attack.
The EMA could not provide any further details during the ongoing investigation.
"More information will be made available in due course," said the agency.
Hacker attack: security expert with dark theory
Are common criminals behind the attack?
Were hackers at work on behalf of a state?
"Secret services have the task of defending their nations against external threats," says top security expert Mikko Hyppönen from F-Secure to the German press agency.
With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that these intelligence agencies were trying to steal vaccine research data.
"If Covid-19 is viewed as an outside threat, they also believe that stealing research data will make it easier for their nations to defend," explains Hyppönen.
As long as
Biontech * had saved
its research results on its own systems, these were safe.
“However, there is nothing they can do
to protect
their
research data
if it
ends up on government IT systems
as part of the
approval process
.
Attackers will find the easiest way to gain access to the data they are after. "
Regulation documents related to the COVID-19 vaccine were "unlawfully accessed" after a cyberattack on Europe's medicines regulator.
https://t.co/UsjZ7tFZvV
- @mikko (@mikko) December 9, 2020
Biontech Pfizer Corona Vaccine - Britain has launched mass vaccination
The
British health authorities
have already
granted
emergency approval for the corona vaccine from
the Mainz-based pharmaceutical company
Biontech and its US partner Pfizer
.
People in Great Britain have been immunized en masse since Tuesday.
Two NHS workers responded to the vaccine with allergy symptoms.
In
Canada
,
too
, the health authorities gave the green light for the active ingredient from Biontech and Pfizer on Wednesday.
The vaccine had undergone accelerated testing while it was still in clinical trials.
It fulfills the "strict safety, effectiveness and quality requirements for use in Canada".
A release from Biontech said that at least 20 million vaccine doses would be delivered to Canada over the coming year.
The first vaccine doses of the Biontech-Pfizer active ingredient have arrived
in
Israel
.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the DHL cargo plane with the cargo at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport.
Netanyahu announced that he would be the "first" to be vaccinated in order to be a "role model".
In the
United States
, the FDA's vaccination commission was supposed to deal with the application for emergency approval of this vaccine on Thursday.
(AFP, dpa,
ml
)
* Merkur.de is part of the Ippen digital network
