Another New Threat: Cyberbiosecurity

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Alex Berezow wrote an interesting article about this new threat. That is all we need is a new threat! But it is better to be aware than be blindsided.

Hacking DNA Sequences: Biosecurity Meets Cybersecurity

Vulnerabilities in cyberbiosecurity are becoming a major public health threat. It's time to prepare before the worst happens.

Until recently, biosecurity and cybersecurity have been considered separate realms. The former dealt mostly with preventing dangerous pathogens from escaping labs or falling into the wrong hands, while the latter dealt mostly with preventing hackers from accessing data or stealing money.

But that is now changing. Recent events have shown that there is substantial overlap between these two security concerns. For lack of a better term, those in the field are now calling it cyberbiosecurity.

Consider what has occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hackers used ransomware -- malicious software that holds an organization's computer files hostage until the hackers are paid a ransom -- to target hospitals. Other hackers stole data about the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which was then released online a month later. Still, other hackers sponsored by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea were looking to steal COVID vaccine intellectual property.

Given the pervasiveness of such threats, it won't be long before a cyberattack intentionally kills somebody. In fact, one cyberattack in Germany already indirectly killed a patient seeking emergency services but was turned away by the hospital due to a computer network failure. Unable to get treatment in time, she died. It is clear, therefore, that cyberattacks are a threat to public health.

A letter to the editor by Dr. Rami Puzis et al. in Nature Biotechnology explains how malware could be used to pull off an elaborate trick: DNA sequence hacking. Ordering short pieces of DNA is extremely common. (I've done it myself many, many times when I was a graduate student.) A company synthesizes the DNA, places it in a small vial, and ships it to the lab using a courier like DHL. Once it arrives, the researcher simply adds water, and the DNA is ready to go.

The authors worry that an order for a DNA sequence could be hacked. Specifically, their concern is that -- unbeknownst to the researcher -- a harmless DNA sequence could be replaced with something malicious, say, the DNA sequence for a toxic protein or a virus. Then, when the researcher uses the DNA inside of a cell, out pops a nasty surprise rather than whatever the researcher had hoped to produce.

This trick sounds way too difficult to be a realistic threat, like it should be the villainous plot of some Mission Impossible movie. But the authors gave it a try and actually pulled it off using malicious DNA that encoded a toxic protein. The researchers then canceled the order before the manufacturer synthesized the DNA.

There are many areas of overlap between traditional cybersecurity and biosecurity. Another paper written by Dr. Laura Richardson et al. in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology enumerated them.

Oh god.

Jimmy, do you never get tired of trying to scare people?

Who me!! !! The world is full of threats, all kinds of threats, some are real but many are not. That is my special interest.
I look at threats, analyze threats and if they seem warranted, then I devise plans to deal with them.

My main special interest is cataclysmic research. [It is even listed in my WrongPlanet profile.]

A good example is the following thread that I started last year on 22 January. Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

It presently has 117,366 views. As I recall you expressed your view of the seriousness of coronavirus threat on 30 January 2020 just after the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak as a global health emergency in the following manner:

Well, why do you not try solving those "cataclysmic" problems instead of trying to instill panic?

You might try reading my entries in the Emergence of the Deadly Coronavirus thread. Most of my entries were fairly constructive. And I did not try and instill panic. I even attached to my signature a link to a plan from May 2020 to deal with this threat: Practical Preparations for a Coronavirus Pandemic and I have release other plans as the pandemic went on incorporating newer research.