Mysterious Phishing Campaign Targets Organizations in COVID-19 Vaccine Cold Chain (zdnet.com) 20
IBM's cyber-security division says that hackers are targeting companies associated with the storage and transportation of COVID-19 vaccines using temperature-controlled environments -- also known as the COVID-19 vaccine cold chain. From a report: The attacks consisted of spear-phishing emails seeking to collect credentials for a target's internal email and applications. While IBM X-Force analysts weren't able to link the attacks to a particular threat actor, they said the phishing campaign showed the typical "hallmarks of nation-state tradecraft." Targets of the attacks included a wide variety of companies, sectors, and government organizations alike.
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You will need to remember that the African American Community has had bad history with the Medical Industry such as the Tuskegee Experiment [cdc.gov] While mathematically with the distribution of COVID-19 Cases with the Demographics of particular communities. Giving African Americans preference (Especially if they live in COVID hot zones) would probably be a strong benefit over all. We have to be cognizant on how the community in general has been historically been used as medical guinea pigs in which a lot of peopl
Recon (Score:2)
So some APT, possibly a nation-state, is doing recon on the cold chain
1. Someone, being stupid, thought this would be a good way to surreptitiously audit the cold chain. Understand how it works, and verify, in their mind, that the procedures are adequate
or
2. Someone is reconning the cold chain to identify weaknesses so that they can steal vaccine. Either to set up a black market or they are a country on the outs with the world community that thinks they won't get vaccines on a schedule that satisfies the
Re:Recon (Score:5, Insightful)
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The first thing I thought of was sabotage. It seems like, if one was going to steal the vaccine, one would do different things.
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Re:Recon (Score:5, Insightful)
So some APT, possibly a nation-state, is doing recon on the cold chain
1. Someone, being stupid, thought this would be a good way to surreptitiously audit the cold chain. Understand how it works, and verify, in their mind, that the procedures are adequate
or
2. Someone is reconning the cold chain to identify weaknesses so that they can steal vaccine. Either to set up a black market or they are a country on the outs with the world community that thinks they won't get vaccines on a schedule that satisfies them. For example, I can see North Korea stealing vaccine for their leadership
Or, 3. A state is just trying to cause as much havoc as possible to weaken and cause discord in their adversaries. For an analogy, you can kill someone by chopping their head off, or by a thousand little cuts (look up the regional origin of that particular method and you'll get a good idea of where these actors likely are)
Nobody's trying to steal the vaccine (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely this is an attempt to disrupt vaccine distribution by hostile nation states. I can't imagine anyone else but Russia willing to do this. They're the only ones with a motive and who can risk getting caught (their large natural gas reserves are too valuable to risk serious trade embargos over, that's why we cheerfully let them invade the Ukraine). We already know they're conducting campaigns to discourage Americans from getting vaccinated and to encourage anti-vaxxer sentiment. This slots in nicely with that.
As for Iran & Venezuela, neither one of them would take the risk since it would give us a pretext for war, and Trump has already signaled that he would *love* to start a war on the way out. They're both keeping their heads down and waiting for cooler heads in the Whitehouse.
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There are a number of nation-states that would love to see the "First World" burn, even if it means burning themselves in the process too.
In America they are a lot of people who would delight in seeing the States that trend to a different political party just burn too. The Radical Democrat, delights seeing Republican Texas on top of the COVID list of number of infections. A Radical Republican delights on seeing Democratic New York on top of the COVID list of number of deaths.
Other nations are delighted t
Gun to the head. (Score:2)
Targets include EU directorates, companies making vaccine shipping containers, a website development firm linked to vaccine supply chains.
Seems they want more than the "all powerful"* US to burn. They may even want to be the only one's left standing so you'll have to come to them for the solution.
*Our response to COVID-19 has very much put to lie our "all powerful" status.
Too bad. (Score:5, Funny)
Too bad we'll never russia figure out who's doing this. :(
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I think you are Russian to conclusions here.
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I china think it's not the Russians in this case.
I think we are in the area of Terrorism here... (Score:2)
Attacks on critical infrastructure of any kind can happen in the context of war and of terrorism. That is basically it.
"hallmarks of nation-state tradecraft" (Score:2)
Am I reading "hallmarks of nation-state tradecraft" right? This means one or more foreign governments are trying to break in?
If it is nation-state. Think: (Score:2)
Which nation stands to benefit most from delayed vaccine deliveries?