The Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese biosafety laboratory at the center of a conspiracy theory which holds that the COVID-19 coronavirus was created or leaked by the lab, has been targeted by hackers, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks right-wing extremism.
According to the intelligence group, the hackers targeted the institute in Wuhan – the city where the coronavirus outbreak began – as well as the World Health Organization (WHO).
“Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO has seen a dramatic increase in the number of cyber attacks directed at its staff, and email scams targeting the public at large … Scammers impersonating WHO in emails have also increasingly targeted the general public in order to channel donations to a fictitious fund and not the authentic COVID-19 Solidary Response Fund. The number of cyber attacks is now more than five times the number directed at the Organization in the same period last year,” the WHO release added.
Although it’s not clear who’s behind the cyberattacks, SITE suggests that the hackers were trying to retrieve sensitive information regarding COVID-19 – perhaps related to conspiracy theories surrounding the pandemic.
Last week, the US FBI also said it had some evidence of foreign, state-sponsored hackers targeting American institutions researching the coronavirus, potentially to access information regarding vaccines. However, the FBI did not identify the hackers or the states allegedly backing them, nor did it name any of the targets.
US cybersecurity firm FireEye also said Wednesday that in another attack, Vietnam-backed hackers tried to access the email accounts of Wuhan government staff and members of China’s Ministry of Emergency Management. However, Hanoi’s Foreign Affairs Ministry on Thursday said that the FireEye report was “baseless.”
Sourse: sputniknews.com
