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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 12 2020, @08:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-will-share-whatever-we-find,-right? dept.

U.S. Officials: Beware Of China And Others Trying To Steal COVID-19 Research

As researchers around the globe race to develop a coronavirus vaccine, U.S. authorities are warning American firms to exercise extreme caution in safeguarding their research against China and others with a track record of stealing cutting-edge medical technology.

"We are imploring all those research facilities and hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that are doing really great research to do everything in their power to protect it," Bill Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said in an interview with NPR.

"We don't want that company or the research hospital to be the one a year from now, two years from now, identified as having it all stolen before they finished it," said Evanina, whose center falls under the director of national intelligence.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Britain's National Cyber Security Center recently issued a statement saying hackers are "actively targeting organisations ... that include healthcare bodies, pharmaceutical companies, academia, medical research organisations, and local government."

The statement did not name China or any other country. Reuters reported that hackers linked to Iran tried to break into email accounts at the U.S. drugmaker Gilead Sciences, which has a potentially promising drug to treat the COVID-19 virus. Iran denied the report.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @01:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @01:54PM (#993747)

    Results, but not methods. At least, not well enough to be easily replicable. And I wouldn't attribute to altruism what can be replaced by greed. It's just as easily explicable as the group that gets to call firsties is well positioned to cash in on the resultant therapies developed by the research. Even with accelerated approval processes any actual therapeutic results would have to be peer reviewed before any organization can actually take something to trial.