15 December 2020

Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine data compromised in EMA hack


Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine data compromised in EMA hack

It appears that a recent cyber attack against the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has also affected the Massachusetts-based vaccine maker Moderna Inc. The company said on Monday it was informed by EMA that documents related to pre-submission talks of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate were targeted by hackers, Reuters reported.

The EMA’s scientific committee is due to provide its assessment on Moderna’s vaccine on January 12 and for Pfizer’s COVID-19 candidate on December 29.

Moderna said its submission to the EMA did not contain any data identifying individual study participants and there is no information at present that any participants had been identified in any way.

Last week, EMA disclosed a cyber attack against its systems, although it did not provide any additional information regarding the security breach. However, in a separate statement BioNTech, which makes one of the vaccines in partnership with Pfizer, said that it has been told 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.”

In November, Microsoft warned that three state-sponsored hacker groups (Fancy Bear, Zinc and Сerium) launched targeted campaigns aimed at leading pharmaceutical companies and researchers involved in the development of vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. According to the company, the list of targets included entities in Canada, France, India, South Korea and the United States.

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