Russian spies had access to EMA systems for four months in 2020 hack

Russian attackers were behind the hack of the European Medicines Agency EMA in 2020. They had “unauthorized access to knowledge of COVID-19 vaccines and personal correspondence” for at least four months. The Dutch police warned the rest of Europe in 2021 that these attackers may have access to other European institutions, but nothing was done with that warning, the Volkskrant reports based on its own research.

The EMA discovered the hack on 1 December 2020. A suspicious login on its network at 2:00 a.m. and an attempt to download the entire database of passwords and usernames of EMA employees set off an alarm. The European agency alerted CERT-EU, the European agency that assists institutions with digital incidents, and the Dutch police. The Dutch police’s Team High Tech Crime launched an investigation.