Cambridge based Pharmaceutical Company AstraZeneca has hit the news headlines this week for all wrong reasons. While the company is busy in discovering an efficient vaccine to curb the spread of Corona Virus, news is out that the scientists working on the project are being targeted by fake job offer filled emails laced with data stealing and spying malware.
Although AstraZeneca remained silent on this issue, its vaccine discovering partner University of Oxford issued a statement yesterday confirming the incident. The Vaccine development department also announced that it is working with the UK’s NCSC in finding out the culprits behind the launch of the cyber attack.
Unconfirmed sources claim the AstraZeneca’s R&D department working on the vaccine was been hit by many emails that were laced with malware in the form of email attachments.
Cybersecurity Insiders has learnt that the hackers were seen posing as recruiters and were offering 10 times more salary to COVID-19 vaccine developers working for the British company via LinkedIn and WhatsApp- that when probed attested to be mere fake job offers.
North Korea has denied all allegations put forward by AstraZeneca through Reuters and added that their government had no intention to do so. A spokesperson from North Korean’s Foreign Ministry said that some yellow media journalists living in United States fabricated the speculations published in Reuters.
Preliminary inquiries revealed that all the efforts put forward by hackers were neutralized, as AstraZeneca has one of the world’s best IT infrastructure and staff managing it with great efficiency.
