Stolen Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data leaked by Hackers

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) confirmed that some of its data on the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine were leaked online by those responsible for the hack. 

The EMA did not completely disclose exactly what data was stolen or how the hack took place. However, Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE confirmed that the data stolen belonged to the COVID-19 vaccine candidate BNT162b2 which was stored on an EMA server. The vaccine, marketed under the Tozinameran name, had already been approved for use in several countries before the data being stolen.

The data stolen from EMA first appeared on various hacking forums on December 31^st, 2020, with the data being originally stolen on December 9^th, 2020. Amongst the data released include email screenshots, peer review information, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, and Word documents. 

A joint statement released last week by Pfizer and BioNTech stated: “Today, we were informed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) that the agency has been subject to a cyberattack and that some documents relating to the regulatory submission for Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, which has been stored on an EMA server, had been unlawfully accessed,”

Subsequent investigations by the EMA revealed that only a limited number of documents were accessed during the hack. With the data breach limited to a single IT application.

Several organizations involved in COVID-19 vaccine research and delivery have been targeted since the beginning of the pandemic. These have come in the form of multiple threat actors including state-sponsored hacking groups. Most notably the targeted hack by North Korean hackers on the staff of COVID-19 vaccine maker AstraZeneca plc. 

References

• https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-leak-stolen-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-data-online/
• https://siliconangle.com/2021/01/14/stolen-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine-data-published-online/