Russian Hackers Reportedly Try to Steal COVID-19 Vaccine Data According to CNBC, officials in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. believe hacker group APT29 is responsible. The same group, along with one other, was implicated in the 2016 cyber attack on the Democratic National Committee. The hackers were said to have used spear-phishing and custom malware to target vaccine researchers. John Hultquist, Mandiant Threat Intelligence A spokesman for the Kremlin has denied the allegations, saying the claims lacked proper evidence.