Strontium (hacker grouping)

History

2020: An attack to developers of vaccines from COVID-19 is Microsoft

On November 13, 2020 Microsoft declared cyber attacks of hackers from Russia and the DPRK on the foreign companies which are engaged in creation of vaccines against COVID-19 coronavirus.

As the vice president of the company Tom Bert reported in the blog of Microsoft, the pharmaceutical companies and creators of vaccines against a coronavirus from Canada, France, India, South Korea and the USA became the victims of cyberattacks. Many of these developers signed contracts with the authorities of the different countries for the works connected with COVID-19, he noted.

Microsoft claims, three Zinc, Cerium and Strontium groups participated in attempts of cracking. The first two in the company connect with North Korea, a third — with Russia. Strontium is still known as Fancy Bear or APT28 and, according to U.S. authorities, is connected with the Russian intelligence.

Microsoft without proofs accused the Russian Federation of cyber attacks to developers of the vaccines against a coronavirus

According to Bert, Strontium carries out numerous attacks on office mail of the specialists connected with medical developments. Cerium for this purpose allegedly sends the letters infected with the malware from an employee name of World Health Organization. Microsoft said that during a pandemic hospitals in France, the Czech Republic, Spain, Thailand and the USA also underwent the attacks.

According to Microsoft, hackers tried to steal data of researchers of vaccine using selection of passwords and phishing letters on behalf of applicants or representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Bert told that the most part of the attacks was stopped by the means which are built in products of Microsoft. At the same time it provided proofs of participation of the Russian hackers in the attacks to developers of the vaccines against a coronavirus.

The publication of this information in Microsoft was dated for the Third Parisian forum of the world which is taking place in the middle of November, 2020 at which issues of creation of the best world after COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.

Meanwhile, the German company BioNTech which develops vaccine from COVID-19 disproved messages about the hacker attack on servers of the enterprise.^[1]

Notes