Individuals in multiple organizations that are involved in the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain are being targeted in an organized spear-phishing campaign that appears designed to harvest their online credentials for future attacks.
At risk is data associated with critical components and participants in the so-called cold chain that ensures safe preservation of COVID-19 vaccines during storage and transportation. One example is the potential theft of intellectual property associated with solar panel powered containers designed to keep COVID-19 vaccines cold in countries where reliable power is not readily available.
Researchers from IBM Security's X-Force team, who discovered the threat, described the spear-phishing campaign as spanning six countries and targeting entities associated with Gavi, the Global Vaccine Alliance, and the Cold Chain Equipment Optimization Platform (CCEOP) program.
According to IBM, the campaign — especially the victim-targeting — has all the hallmarks of state-backed activity. However, the vendor stopped short of actually identifying any group or government that might potentially be sponsoring the activity.
"The purpose of the campaign appears to be for credential harvesting," says Melissa Frydyrch, threat hunt researcher at IBM Security X Force. "After obtaining legitimate credentials, it may be possible for an adversary to perform a myriad of potential actions, from collecting sensitive or critical information to even subsequent disruptive or destructive attacks."
The spear-phishing campaign itself involves an email purportedly from an executive at Haier Biomedical, a Chinese company that is currently a supplier for the Gavi CCEOP program.
The phishing messages pose as requests for quotations (RFQ) related to UNICEF's CCEOP program and contain malicious links intended to harvest credentials, Frydyrch says ..
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