China is trying to steal and disrupt the work of American researchers developing vaccines for the coronavirus, US security officials said yesterday.
In a joint announcement the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, accused Beijing of sponsoring attacks that would jeopardise “the delivery of secure, effective and efficient treatment options” for Covid-19.
The agencies urged researchers to be alert to possible attacks from Chinese hackers hunting for “valuable intellectual property and public health data related to vaccines, treatments, and testing”. They encouraged universities and healthcare businesses working on the response to the pandemic to assume that they were a target.
The US has claimed for years that Chinese government hackers steal economic and academic data but