*The company says its security software 鈥榗ontrolled鈥� cyberattacks targeted at seven major pharmaceutical companies and researchers in Canada, France, India, South Korea and US 聽聽

Isola Moses | 绿帽献妻

Amid the worldwide excitement over the recent feats by the drug manufacturers and COVID-19 vaccine makers regarding new vaccine test success from Moderna and Pfizer, Microsoft Incorporation has said it discovered a series of cyberattacks coming from Russia and North Korea respectively.

绿帽献妻 learnt the software giant disclosed that the attacks from the two countries were targeted at research companies doing those tests.

Microsoft, in a blog post stated that the cyberattacks targeted seven major pharmaceutical companies and researchers in Canada, France, India, South Korea and the US.

The tech giant though didn鈥檛 reveal identities of the companies targeted in those countries, or what type of information may have actually been compromised or stolen, agency report said.

However, Microsoft officials said they had notified the affected organisations and offered help where the attacks were successful.

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Tom Burt, Corporate Vice-President, Customer Security and Trust at Microsoft, wrote: 鈥淭wo global issues will help shape people鈥檚 memories of this time in history 鈥� COVID-19 and the increased use of the Internet by malign actors to disrupt society.

鈥淚t鈥檚 disturbing that these challenges have now merged as cyberattacks are being used to disrupt healthcare organisations fighting the pandemic.

鈥淲e think these attacks are unconscionable and should be condemned by all civilized society.

鈥淭oday, we鈥檙e sharing more about the attacks we鈥檝e seen most recently and are urging governments to act.鈥�

According to the company, there are actually three key players in the attacks: 鈥淪trontium,鈥� an actor originating from Russia, and two actors originating from North Korea that Microsoft has dubbed, 鈥淶inc鈥� and 鈥淐erium.鈥�

It said Strontium uses 鈥減assword spray鈥� and brute force login attempts to steal personal login credentials.

The software it uses conducts millions of rapid attempts to crack a third-party鈥檚 personal data, it dislcosed.

Zinc鈥檚 game is to use spear-phishing lures for credential theft by sending messages with fabricated job descriptions pretending to be recruiters.

And Cerium? The angle it works is spear-phishing with email lures using COVID-19 themes while masquerading as World Health Organisation (WHO) representatives.

Fortunately, Burt says the 鈥渕ajority鈥� of the attacks have been blocked by security protections built into the company鈥檚 products.

The company is continuing to make its threat notification service, 鈥淎ccountGuard,鈥� available for free to healthcare and human rights organisations working on COVID-19.

The 195 health care-related groups have enrolled in the service, and it now protects 1.7 million e-mail accounts that those organisations serve, stated Microsoft.

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