Suspected North Korean hackers have been targeting employees of U.K.-Swiss drug company and COVID-19 vaccine maker AstraZeneca plc in an attempt to hack the company, according to sources quoted Friday by Reuters.

The hackers are said to have been posing as recruiters on sites such as LinkedIn and WhatsApp to approach the company’s staff with fake job offers. When staff show an interest, they are then sent documents pretending to be job descriptions but laced with malware. Staff across AstraZeneca are said to have been targeted, including those working on COVID-19 research.

AstraZeneca, along with being one of the world’s largest drug companies, also has one of the leading candidates for a COVID-19 vaccine. Developed at Oxford University, it recently finished Phase 3 testing, though with only a 70% average efficacy, lower than the 94.5% to 95% reported by vaccines being developed by Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. That said, CNN reports that the AstraZeneca vaccine could prove to be more valuable for the world than the other two in the coming months in providing vaccine coverage in poorer countries.

North Korea has been attributed to various and ongoing cyberattacks this year but the switch to targeting COVID-19 research is said to be fairly new. Reuters said the same campaign had previously focused on defense companies and media organizations, the former referring to a North Korean campaign dubbed “Operation North Star” that was detailed in July. That operation also notably included the use of fake job ads and malicious documents bundled with malware.

Although the report that AstraZeneca is being specifically targeted is new, COVID-19-related research has been targeted before. Microsoft Corp warned Nov. 13 that it had detected cyberattacks from three nation-state actors targeting seven prominent companies directly involved in researching vaccines and treatments for COVID-19. The attacks were attributed to Strontium, a Russian advanced persistent threat group and two groups from North Korea dubbed Zinc and Cerium.

North Korea has not commented on the report. Getting confirmed news out of the country is difficult at the best of times, but the country has become even more insular during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A report Nov. 27 claimed that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered at least two people executed, banned fishing at sea and locked down the capital, Pyongyang, as part of frantic efforts to guard against the pandemic. Suffice to say, North Korea may have as desperate a need for a vaccine as other countries.

Photo: AstraZeneca