The joint warning from the FBI and the DHS cyber arm, CISA, warns “organizations seeking COVID-19 that they are likely to target and compromise the network by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The health, pharmaceutical and research sectors who work on the COVID-19 response should all be aware that they are the main objectives of this activity and take the necessary measures to protect their systems. “
The notification heightens the accusation by the United States government that China is taking advantage of the pandemic to carry out significant cyber espionage on critical institutions fighting the virus.
“We must be the first to enter if we want any of our allies to follow us,” a national security official at CNN said Wednesday earlier, explaining the thought behind the warning. “If this pandemic fails to bring our allies to the right place, what happens?”
On Monday, the head of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice that appeared on CNBC said: “It would be foolish to think that at this time the Chinese were not behind some of the IT activities that we are seeing affecting US pharmaceutical companies and research institutes. “doing research on the coronavirus.
“This is the holy grail of biomedical research right now” and has “enormous commercial and geopolitical value,” he added.
Demers also said that U.S. companies will eventually want to sell their products.
Cyber espionage from China against the United States increased in the months following the outbreak of the virus according to the leading cyber security group FireEye. The group reported that the Chinese group APT41 has implemented “one of the largest campaigns of a Chinese cyber espionage actor that we have observed in recent years.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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