Without ever setting foot in the lab, a threat actor could dupe DNA researchers into creating pathogens, according to a study describing “an end-to-end cyber-biological attack”
Researchers have described a theoretical cyberattack that could be used to dupe unsuspecting scientists into producing dangerous biological substances, toxins and synthetic viruses.
The paper, authored by researchers from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, sheds light on the potential risks of cyberattackers leveraging malware to subvert a scientist’s computer and interfere with the DNA synthesis process.
“As DNA synthesis becomes more widespread, concern is mounting that a cyberattack intervening with synthetic DNA orders could lead to the synthesis of nucleic acids encoding parts of pathogenic organisms or harmful proteins and toxins,” the team told the Nature Biotechnology science journal.
According to the researchers, the attack would exploit a weakness in the design of the Screening Framework Guidance for Providers of Synthetic Double-Stranded DNA and its successor, the Harmonized Screening Protocol v2.0, which allows bypassing these protocols through a generic obfuscation procedure. Combining this with inadequate cybersecurity measures protecting the synthetic gene engineering pipeline, a remote threat actor could meddle with biological processes.
“Together, these weaknesses facilitate an end-to-end cyberbiological attack, in which a remote attacker may inject obfuscated pathogenic DNA into an online order of synthetic genes, using a malicious browser plugin,” the researchers explained.
RELATED READING: Malware coded int ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
