North Korea ‘tried to hack UK COVID vaccine maker AstraZeneca'

North Korean hackers have tried to break into the systems of AstraZeneca, the UK drugmaker working with Oxford University to produce a COVID-19 vaccine, sources say.

Hackers posed as recruiters on networking site LinkedIn and on WhatsApp and approached AstraZeneca staff with fake job offers, according to Reuters news agency.

They then sent fake documents purporting to be job descriptions laced with malicious code designed to gain access to a victim's computer.

Pyongyang has previously denied carrying out cyberattacks.

AstraZeneca declined to comment on the alleged hacking attempt.

Watch: North Korea tries to hack South’s vaccine-makers

It comes after South Korea said its intelligence agency had foiled an attempt by the north to hack into companies developing vaccines for COVID-19.

One Seoul official warned North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un is suffering from COVID “paranoia”, prompting him to take “unreasonable” actions like banning fishing and salt production because of fears that seawater might have been contaminated with the virus.

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The official told reporters: “He has been expressing emotional excess, anger and signs of stress, and increasingly giving unreasonable orders.”

Microsoft has previously said that hackers working for the Russian and North Korean governments had tried to break into the networks of seven pharmaceutical companies and vaccine researchers in Canada, France, India, South Korea and the United States.

Watch: Disinfection checks in North Korea

North Korea continues to claim there have been no coronavirus cases in the country.

During a speech to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of its ruling Workers’ Party, Kim Jong-Un said he was grateful that not a single citizen had been infected with the virus.

This claim has been questioned by experts and humanitarian workers.

South Korea’s intelligence service said an outbreak in North Korea could not be ruled out, as the country had active trade and people-to-people exchanges with China before closing the border in late January.

It has also been claimed that Kim Jong-Un is deliberately hiding coronavirus victims from the international community.

Humanitarian aid worker Tim Peters, a Christian activist who runs helping Hands Korea based in Seoul, told the South China Morning Post that COVID-19 “quarantine camps” had been built to house patients near the Chinese border and people in them were being left to starve to death.

David Lee, a pastor who works with North Korean defectors in Seoul, also told the South China Morning Post that refugees had reported cases of people with coronavirus symptoms “being forced into isolation, or being boarded up in their homes without food or other support and left to die”.

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