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U.S. Officials: Beware of China and Others Trying to Steal COVID-19 Research

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

takyon writes:

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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @04:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @04:25PM (#993827)

    We'd get a philosophy speech about how "the other side" thinks differently, and they're content to nibble away at a problem one little piece at a time

    It's true... kind of. "They" don't think differently. They think exactly the same as "we" do. Take a big problem, solve it one piece at a time. You don't build a trans-american railroad in one night.

    Of course it's easy to disagree with the goal of keeping IP secret (or agree with it), but assuming you do want to keep IP secret, their comment is very true and applicable.

    The really amusing part was when they sent an "undercover agent" to test our compliance with the reporting process. Some old dude in a pink polo shirt walking a dog on the 2nd floor of our building (no grass outside) hangs around the door and starts dropping heavy questions about the technical specs of the product

    And you still remember this story to this day.

    The goal of this "test" was as much education and to give it salience as anything. How many "training sessions" of new tools and techniques have you been in that you never applied, and forgot a month later? (I know I've lost count of the "next cool new thing" I've forgotten.)

    It sounds to me that this test did a lot of good.

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