- North Korea wants to “decide which [vaccine] the easiest is to start and transport for the black market, ‘said an official.
- The country has a long history of counterfeiting, scam, drug trafficking and arms smuggling.
- The dictatorship wants foreign exchange. The domestic currency is mostly worthless.
- Visit the Insider Business Department for more stories.
North Korean hackers attempted to hack into the servers of US vaccine maker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, hoping to gather scientific data that could be used to make copies of a COVID-19 vaccine to black international markets, according to intelligence officials in Europe.
North Korea’s intention was probably to raise funds in foreign currency. The domestic currency of the vault dictatorship is mostly worthless outside its borders.
Two European security officials briefed on cyber operations told Insider the attempted intrusion is likely an official North Korean operation to gather scientific data on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, one of only three vaccines so far released by the World Health Organization approved for emergency use. Both officials said the attempt was related to the November announcement of multiple intrusions into the Microsoft network infrastructure.
‘It was clearly an attempt to gather information rather than a
wanware
– or ransom-style attack. I will not go into technical details, but we have gained a lot of experience with each type of attack, ” said a European official, who would not be named due to the extremely sensitive situation.
“North Korea will have physical access to Pfizer vaccines long after seeing Chinese or Russian versions. But they want to decide which is the easiest to start and transport for the black market,” the official said, noting that both Russia and China have promised millions of doses for free to North Korea, despite the country’s claim that it has never had a case of COVID.
“So they wanted to see if the Pfizer vaccine would be a viable dose to copy,” the official added. “We do not provide any information on whether the hacking attempt will succeed, but if it did, I would suspect that the Pfizer vaccine would present too many manufacturing and storage problems compared to the Russian or Chinese vaccinations.” The Pfizer vaccine requires two types of refrigeration; the AstraZeneca version only requires a normal refrigerator.
Asked if North Korea would try to sell a bootleg of some kind, the source said no doubt, given North Korea’s long history of counterfeiting, bootlegging, drug trafficking and arms smuggling by its embassies around the world.
Burglary alone yields large sums of revenue to the government, according to U.S. government charges against a ring of North Korean state-linked hackers accused of stealing $ 1.3 billion from various targets.
North Korea has been accused for decades of using its embassies as lucrative outposts for organized crime, ranging from counterfeit US currencies, handling methamphetamine around the world via secure diplomatic bags, to selling weapons to rogue regimes in struggle with embargoes.
In 2007, Israeli warplanes bombed a secret nuclear reactor built in Syria with the help of North Korean engineers, who had long helped in the Middle East governments in exchange for hard currency.
“The North Koreans have been vital to Israel’s enemies since the 1970s, first helping the PLO build massive fortresses and bunkers in camps in Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley,” a former Israeli official said. “And today we have strong evidence – it is undoubtedly true – that they have been working with Hezbollah and Iran for decades to strengthen their positions, not only in Lebanon but also in Iran.”
When asked why North Korea was their resource, the source was blunt.
“They are excellent engineers with a national history of mining,” they said. “Arabs do not really have hundreds of years of coal mining like experts. And they can work anywhere and there will be no questions if there is an accident or the site is bombed by the [Israeli Air Force]. “