
FBI Says Foreign States Hacked into U.S. Covid-19 Research Centers - sciencetech28
https://www.sciencetechniz.com/2020/04/fbi-says-foreign-states-hacked-into-us.html
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leakybit
Quite frankly, all covid-19 research should be made public especially if they
received government funding.

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anthony_doan
I think the concern here is HIPPA where any PHI were leak

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slowmovintarget
The most concerning thing in my mind is not privacy or keeping the "IP", it is
active interference with the research in the form of ransomware.

This would mean an attempt to stop or delay development of treatments and
vaccines. That's evil.

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olalonde
Only concerning if you think any foreign state would be stupid enough to do
that (I don't think there is).

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azinman2
You're very optimistic.

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Threeve303
It's starting to feel like it would be news if it didn't happen

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usrusr
Right. Once a state has established a secretive organization to do nefarious
things that org will keep doing, until it is disbanded and surprisingly often
even after. They'll keep doing without too much thought about whether it makes
sense on a political level, because those decisions are explicitly not their
responsibility. In a closely related field it's not the army's job to decide
whom to attack, it their job to be ready. The same applies to secretive orgs,
they are just more difficult to control. Without decisive political effort to
stop them when collaboration is preferred, intelligence people will keep
gathering intelligence, propaganda people will keep invening lies, thought
police will keep cracking down on communications (see the silencing of Dr Li
Wenliang that was quickly rolled back once the topic escalated to people with
decisionmaking in their job description) and offensive hackers will keep
poking at servers. That's just how it is. It's not good at all, it's terrible,
but it doesn't suddenly get worse than usual when it hits Covid-19 research.
Surely the NSA wouldn't erase intercepted communications upon realizing that
is about Covid-19, right?

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reaperducer
I wonder what it would take for all or most of the nations of the world to get
together an unplug another nation from the internet.

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FriedPickles
Would a coalition of nations be capable of enforcing that? Seems like text-
only, high latency internet could be easily smuggled via satellite or
terrestrial radio.

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yumraj
I think it's time to create a _Great Firewall for the rest of the World_

And while I agree that information related to covid-19 should be freely
accessible, in this case we cannot assume that information was merely _read_
and not _modified_ due to whatever nefarious reasons the intruders may have.

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thanksforfish
Please, no. Hackers have no problem getting through the Great Firewall of
China, it's to keep the average person away from certain information.

Use security in depth, and zero trust networks, not just perimeter defense.

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netsharc
Is this a legitimate news site... or is it one of those "Bill Gates spread
coronavirus to kill people, the evidence is he said we should reduce
population _growth rate_ and we interpreted it as him saying he wants to
reduce the population" sites?

The fact that segments are repeated makes me think it's not a reputable site
(in case they manage to fix it, screenshot as of the moment:
[https://i.imgur.com/M2Glm84.png](https://i.imgur.com/M2Glm84.png)). Also the
poster's username on here is very similar to the site name...

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Scipio_Afri
Here’s the news from Reuters

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
cyber-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-cyber-
idUSKBN21Y3GL)

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acqq
And there it sounds much less specific: "the bureau had recently seen state-
backed hackers poking around."

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aspenmayer
It's a bit more specific than that.

'FBI Deputy Assistant Director Tonya Ugoretz told participants in an online
panel discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute that the bureau had recently
seen state-backed hackers poking around a series of healthcare and research
institutions.

'“We certainly have seen reconnaissance activity, and some intrusions, into
some of those institutions, especially those that have publicly identified
themselves as working on COVID-related research,” she said.'

from the referenced report at: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-
coronavirus-cyber/...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
cyber/fbi-official-says-foreign-hackers-have-targeted-covid-19-research-
idUSKBN21Y3GL)

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acqq
It's far from what sciencetechniz.com article claims, and I've quoted the
actual words of the person, as quoted in the article, not the interpretations.

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aspenmayer
But the context for your original reply and also my own reply were to the
Reuters article. Also, everything in the opening sentence gloss is literally
word for word supported by the very next line, which is a direct quote of the
Reuters article which itself is a direct quote from the speaker from the FBI
at the conference.

Not to be pedantic, but I honestly don’t know what you are getting at.

