As the vaccine race intensifies, it's spy against spy
Every major spy service around the globe is trying to find out what everyone else is up to in the biggest intelligence gathering contest since the space race.
The coronavirus pandemic and the search for a vaccine has prompted one of the fastest peacetime mission shifts in recent times for the world's intelligence agencies. AP
Chinese intelligence hackers were intent on stealing coronavirus vaccine data, so they looked for what they believed would be an easy target. Instead of simply going after pharmaceutical companies, they conducted digital reconnaissance on the University of North Carolina and other schools doing cutting-edge research.
They were not the only spies at work. Russia's premier intelligence service, the SVR, targeted vaccine research networks in the United States, Canada and Britain, espionage efforts that were first detected by a British spy agency monitoring international fibre optic cables.
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