As Europe tries hard to fight off COVID-19, with COVID-19 Vaccine there’s another threat that is likely to worsen the situation. It seems that even social distancing and lock-downs are ineffective when it comes to curbing the malicious attempts of cyber-criminals.
Recently, hackers hijacked European super computers that were working on creating a vaccine for COVID-19. The purpose of this hack was to leverage the superior computer hardware to mine cryptocurrency.
A report reveals that cybercriminals infected multiple supercomputers that were spread throughout the European Union. Once it was found that cryptojacking was involved, authorities terminated the operations of these computers. An early investigation uncovered the mystery behind the breach: hackers stole SSH credentials from authorized parties who had access to supercomputers.
Experts also discovered that the hacked computing resources were used to mine Monero, a popular cryptocurrency. There is uncertainty regarding the exact purpose of these computers. Many believe that these computers were used in the research of COVID-19 so that an effective vaccine could be developed.
Countries that were targeted include the UK, Switzerland, and Germany. Some reports also indicate a similar breach in Spain on May 13, where a researcher published a blog on the hack.
The first reported incident occurred in the last week at the University of Edinburgh. The educational institution houses a supercomputer known as ARCHER. The breach in the login nodes of Archer prompted the authorities to shut it down as investigations perform a deeper analysis of the attack. Until recently, Archer was waiting for further security fixes. Furthermore, work is also being done to reset its system and credentials.