Cybercriminals are now targeting COVID-19 Vaccine Supply Chain

IBM X-Force warned Thursday that it had uncovered a series of malicious campaigns that target COVID-19 vaccine supply chain. The attacks were carried out on selected companies involved in the effort of distributing vaccine does, which must be kept cold.

European Commission’s Directorate General for Taxation and Custom Union was one of the targets of the scam campaign, along with several from European and Asian companies that have not been disclosed.

IBM said, the scammers might have the purpose to harvest credentials, possibly to gain future unauthorized access to corporate networks and sensitive information relating to the COVID-19 vaccine distribution.”

While it not clear yet whether any attacks were successful or not, IMB said the precision of the operation signals “the potential hallmarks of nation-state tradecraft.”

The vaccine developed by Pfizer and German based company BioNTech who have gotten the green light to distribute their vaccine has to store it below 70 degree Celsius for its effectiveness. For this, Haier Biomedical -a copy chain supply company from china working with WHO and United Nations and other similar companies may be required.

 The scammers impersonate them as an executive from Haier Biomedical and disguises as its employee. They send spam emails to make the organizations believe to be the providers of the material need for the transformation Covid 19 cold chain.

The emails contain malicious HTML files that users are asked to download it and open locally on their computer. When opened, they are asked for their credentials, allegedly for looking the content. This allows attackers to create phishing online pages that security researchers and law enforcement agencies can detect.