North Korean hackers stole Covid-19 data from Pfizer, says the South Korean lawmaker

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Ha Tae-keung said on Tuesday that he and other lawmakers had been informed of the hack by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the country’s intelligence agency.

It is unclear when the alleged attack took place. The INS declined to comment, and Pyongyang did not publicly acknowledge the alleged theft, although North Korean diplomats usually deny any allegations of wrongdoing.

This is not the first time that North Korean cybercriminals have been accused of stealing information related to the treatment of Covid-19. Microsoft claimed in November that cyberattacks in North Korea targeted vaccine manufacturers, sometimes “disguising themselves as representatives of the World Health Organization.”

Most of the attacks were blocked, Microsoft said in a statement at the time.

Reuters reported later that month that North Korean hackers were suspected of carrying out a cyber attack on British coronavirus vaccine developer AstraZeneca, posing as a recruiter and targeting pharmaceutical company staff – including those working on Covid-19 research. – with false job offers.

North Korea has invested heavily in offensive cyber capabilities in recent years, allowing the poor country to make money, attack enemies and pursue the priorities of the Kim Jong Un regime with relatively minimal spending.

The United Nations has accused hackers in Pyongyang of stealing $ 316.4 million worth of virtual assets between 2019 and November 2020, money that probably went to fund the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, in violation of international law. .

It seems that the Kim regime has diverted its cyber capabilities to its efforts to prevent the pandemic and provide a vaccine.

COVAX, an initiative to provide equitable global access to Covid-19 vaccines, said it would provide North Korea with nearly 2 million doses of AstraZeneca-Oxford coronavirus. But North Korea is probably doing everything it can to get a vaccine to its people, even if it means resorting to theft.

“North Koreans are taking a comprehensive approach,” said Dr. Kee B. Park, director of the Korea Health Policy Project at Harvard Medical School and the North Korean program at the American Korean Medical Association. “They try everything – making their own, maybe through GAVI (an organization involved in COVAX), maybe through bilateral channels.”

North Korea’s top priority since the pandemic broke out last year has been to keep the coronavirus from overwhelming its dilapidated health infrastructure. Pyongyang voluntarily severed most of its insufficient ties with the outside world in 2020 to prevent an influx of Covid-19, including disrupting almost all trade with Beijing – an economic lifeline North Korea must prevent its people to starve.

The reduction in trade has hit the economy, but in terms of public health it seems to have worked. It does not appear that North Korea has suffered major outbreaks of Covid-19 within its borders. North Korea says it has not registered any cases of Covid-19, a statement that most experts consider suspicious. The country has tested only a fraction of its population and has a common border with China, where the pandemic began.

However, Kim, who is overweight and lives a very unhealthy lifestyle, has been confident enough to appear in public without a mask on several occasions during the pandemic.

He and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, were photographed attending a maskless concert on Tuesday. It was the first time Ri had appeared in the North Korean state media in more than a year. Ha, the South Korean lawmaker, said South Korean secret services believed it was expected as a precaution because of the pandemic.

Data utility

It’s not exactly what data North Korea allegedly stole from Pfizer or what North Korean scientists can do. North Korea said in July that it would try to develop its own coronavirus vaccine, but few believed Pyongyang had the scientific resources or funding to make a billion-dollar effort.

Park, from Harvard Medical School, said that during a visit to North Korea, he saw medical professionals make presentations demonstrating the knowledge and technology of handling and joining eyelashes. However, the country may not be able to take the next crucial steps in vaccine development, he said.

With so few cases likely in North Korea, there are probably not enough infected people in the country to properly test the effectiveness of a household vaccine, Park said. Conducting trials abroad, as China has done, would probably be too costly and could violate United Nations sanctions banning joint ventures with the Kim regime.

Then there is the question of whether North Korea has the capacity to produce a vaccine on such a large scale. Pyongyang usually relies on international donors for other vaccines, such as tuberculosis.

Finally, it is unclear how useful Pfizer data would be for North Korea. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first vaccine ever approved for emergency use to use MRNA technology, which only a handful of pharmaceutical companies have been able to achieve. Those who did this spent billions doing so, according to Park.

Even if North Korea could develop an MRNA vaccine like Pfizer, it is unlikely that the country will have special equipment to transport and store it. The Pfizer vaccine should be stored at ultracold temperatures of approximately minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 75 degrees Celsius) to keep the fragile MRNA material safe.

“MRNA is a state-of-the-art technology,” Park said. “Whether or not North Korea has this kind of technology, I don’t know, but … I’d be really surprised if it could do that. It’s something that even many developed countries are facing.”

CNN’s Will Ripley, Paula Hancocks and Amanda Sealy contributed to this report.

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