Last week, a report by the EMA disclosed that attackers had hacked into their servers and stolen data related to the BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Until recently, the hackers’ motives had been unclear. New developments from the EMA, however, reveal that: “Some of the correspondence has been manipulated by the perpetrators prior to publication in a way which could undermine trust in vaccines.”
The attack could have either been perpetrated by state-sponsored threat actors or hacktivists attempting to appeal to the anti-vaxxer movement. The EMA sought to reassure the public to trust in the effectiveness of the vaccine in a statement on Friday. “Despite [the] urgency [to make vaccines available across the EU as quickly as possible], there has always been consensus across the EU not to compromise the high quality standards and to base any recommendation on the strength of the scientific evidence on a vaccine’s safety, quality and efficacy, and nothing else.”
