Western Governments Accuse Russia of Hacking Virus Vaccine Trials

“The report is full of specific operational information that defenders can use” to protect their networks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, rejected the accusations, saying, “We don’t have information about who may have hacked pharmaceutical companies and research centers in Britain."

“We may say one thing: Russia has nothing to do with those attempts,” Peskov said, according to the state news agency Tass.

The accusations come at a tenuous time for relations between Russia and both the U.S. and U.K.

Besides political ill will, especially among Democrats, about the 2016 election interference, the Trump administration is under pressure to confront Russia over intelligence information that Moscow offered bounties to Taliban fighters to attack allied fighters.

The Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, said “it’s clear that Russia’s malign cyber operations and other destabilizing activities — from financial and other material support to non-state actors in Afghanistan to poisoning dissidents in democratic countries — have persisted, even when exposed.”

He urged President Donald Trump to condemn such activities.

The vaccine assessment came two years to the day after Trump met with Putin in Helsinki and appeared to side with Moscow over U.S. intelligence agencies about the election interference.

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The U.K. did not say whether Putin knew about the more recent research hacking, but British officials believe such intelligence would be highly prized.