North Korea Attempted to Hack Pfizer for COVID-19 Vaccine Info

News is circulating that South Korea's spy agency allegedly found out that North Korean hackers attempted to "break into" pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's computer systems in order to gather information about its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment technology.

The secretive Asian nation has been under self-imposed isolation since January 2020, to protect its residents from the coronavirus, which first emerged from neighboring China.

Since then, the pandemic has quickly gathered speed worldwide, yet North Korea still reports no coronavirus cases on local soil to this day, as reported in France24 news.

North Korea may be urgently looking for solutions, treatments, and vaccinations against the virus, as it has had to find its own ways of dealing with the disease. Experts claim, however, that it would be hard to imagine a country that hasn't yet been hit by COVID-19.

Seoul's National Intelligence Service "briefed us that North Korea tried to obtain technology involving the Covid vaccine and treatment by using cyberwarfare to hack into Pfizer", MP Ha Tae-keung told reporters after a hearing behind closed doors, reported France24.

This isn't the first time we hear about North Korea's hacker team. Late last month reports that hackers from the country have been targeting and hacking into security researchers' systems were disclosed. So it may not come as such a huge surprise that the country's hackers are now targeting Pfizer's systems. 

Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine against COVID-19 is being administered globally as we speak, with impressive results showing 94 percent efficacy rates when people receive its two doses. Israel carried out the largest "real world" clinical trial of the pharmaceutical giant's vaccine, which showed the promising results in their full glory.

Pfizer hopes to deliver up to two billion doses of its vaccine this year. 

This was a breaking story and was regularly updated as new information became available.