The perpetrators of a cyberattack against the European Medicines Agency found and later released data regarding the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech (NSDQ:BNTX). 

But the cybercriminals altered the data in a manner that could undermine trust in vaccines, according to a statement from the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

The disclosed documents included internal emails from late 2020 that contained information about the regulation of COVID-19 vaccines in Europe. 

The breach also involved PowerPoint, PDF and Word documents and peer review comments from EMA. 

A post containing a link to the manipulated documents has been posted on the dark web with the title, “Astonishing fraud! Evil Pfffizer! Fake vaccines!”

Another thread posting links to the modified files stated they were evidence of a “big data scam.” 

European authorities are investigating the incident.