New Delhi: A US security official, who tracks Chinese hacking activity, has said that hackers deployed by the Chinese government targeted biotech company Moderna Inc. earlier this year in a bid to steal valuable data, according to a report in Reuters.
A US-based vaccine research developer, Moderna Inc. is one of the front-runners in the Covid-19 vaccine race. It announced its vaccine candidate in January, which will undergo a massive human clinical trial this month.
In an indictment made public last week, the US Department of Justice said that two Chinese nationals had been accused of spying on three unnamed Covid research organisations in the US.
The research firm confirmed that it had been in touch with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and was made aware about the suspected “information reconnaissance activities” by the hackers.
Reconnaissance activities include scouting important accounts after entering a network and probing public websites for vulnerabilities, among other things.
Moderna’s spokesperson Ray Jordan said, “Moderna remains highly vigilant to potential cybersecurity threats, maintaining an internal team, external support services and good working relationships with outside authorities to continuously assess threats and protect our valuable information.”
The developments come just days after US and China closed each other’s consulates. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the Chinese consulate in Houston was closed because “it was a den of spies”.
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Indictment of two Chinese nationals
Last week, the Justice Department accused China of sponsoring hackers targeting labs developing Covid vaccines.
Officials also charged two Chinese nationals for allegedly spying on US companies in Maryland, Massachusetts and California that are engaged in coronavirus research.
The indictment of former electrical engineering students Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi alleges that they stole terabytes of data from high-tech companies from around the world, including the US.
The other charges include trade secret theft, wire fraud conspiracy and they are also accused of receiving support from Chinese intelligence agencies.
Moderna’s vaccine candidate
Moderna’s vaccine is the foremost candidate in the vaccine race in the US. The Trump administration has hedged all its bets on it and has invested nearly half a billion dollars in its development.
The US government is also helping Moderna launch a clinical trial of up to 30,000 people, starting this month.
In an earlier trial, the vaccine candidate protected 16 monkeys against the Covid infection. Two injections of the vaccine protected against heavy exposure to the virus at two different levels of dosage.
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