IBM’s cybersecurity division has detected a series of
cyberattacks aimed at the companies and government organizations that will be
distributing coronavirus vaccines around the world, New York Times reported
on Thursday.

It is not clear whether the goal is to steal the technology
for keeping the vaccines refrigerated in transit or to sabotage the movements,
the report read.

The findings were alarming enough for the Homeland Security
department to issue its own warning against the possibility of attacks on Operation Warp Speed—Trump’s
vaccine development and delivery programme.

Both, the IBM researchers and the department’s Cybersecurity
and Infrastructure Security Agency, have said the attacks seemed like an
attempt to steal the credentials corporate executives and officials at organizations
world over involved in the refrigeration process necessary to protect vaccine
doses, or what the industry calls the cold chain.

Josh Corman, a coronavirus strategist at the cybersecurity
agency, said in a statement that the IBM report was a reminder of the need for
“cybersecurity diligence at each step in the vaccine supply chain.”

He urged organizations “involved in vaccine storage and
transport to harden attack surfaces, particularly in cold storage operation.”

The cyberattackers “were working to get access to how the
vaccine is shipped, stored, kept cold and delivered,” said Nick Rossmann, who
heads IBM’s global threat intelligence team.

“We think whoever is behind this wanted to be able to
understand the entire cold chain process,” Rossmann said, as quoted by the
paper.

The department detected that there were ‘phishing’ mails
impersonating a top executive from Chinese company, Haier Biomedical, which is
one of the participant in the distribution chain.

Researchers for IBM Security X-Force, the company’s
cybersecurity arm, said they believed that the attacks were so sophisticated
that they pointed to a government-sponsored initiative, not a rogue criminal
operation aimed purely at monetary gain. But they could not identify which
country might be behind them.

Experts, who ruled out China, suspect that Russia or North Korea
could be behind the attack.

Attacks have been detected not only in Asian countries as
Taiwan and South Korea, but also in Europe, including the European Commission’s
Directorate General for Taxation and Customs Union.

IBM said the reach of the
attacks has indicated a sophisticated understanding of identifying the
target and attacking them simultaneously.