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Cybercriminals manipulated COVID-19 vaccine files before sharing them

By Brian Buntz | January 20, 2021

Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine image courtesy of Wikipedia

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.

About The Author

Brian Buntz

The pharma and biotech editor of WTWH Media, Brian is a veteran journalist with more than 15 years of experience covering an array of life science topics, including clinical trials, drug discovery and development and medical devices. Before coming to WTWH, he served as content director focused on connected devices at Informa. In addition, Brian covered the medical device sector for 10 years at UBM. At Qmed, he overhauled the brand’s news coverage and helped to grow the site’s traffic volume dramatically. He had previously held managing editor roles on two of the company’s medical device technology publications. Connect with him on LinkedIn or email at bbuntz@wtwhmedia.com.