GCHQ Launches War Against Coronavirus Vaccine Fake News

British intelligence agents are reportedly using techniques developed to eliminate terrorist propaganda in a fresh push to prevent the spread of Russian anti-vaccine disinformation. 

This is the latest move by GCHQ cyber-agents to counter activity linked to Moscow whose aim is to exploit the pandemic in order to undermine the West and to help boost Russian interests. The spy agency is using a toolkit developed to tackle disinformation and recruitment material peddled by Islamic State, according to press reports.

Russian operatives have been involved in spreading false reports that a British-made Covid-19 vaccine in the final stage of testing could turn people into monkeys, an investigation has found. 

• One image shows Prime Minister Boris Johnson walking into Downing Street, but it has been manipulated to make him look like a yeti. The picture is captioned: 'I like my BigFoot vaccine'.

• Another image shows a chimpanzee in a lab coat from pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, which is manufacturing the vaccine, brandishing a syringe.

The Oxford vaccine program is currently in phase three trials, which are the final stage experiments done on a huge group of people and the results suggest that it works.It has already proven to be safe in earlier tests on small groups and has now been given to more than 30,000 people in the UK, US, Brazil and South Africa.

In July, British spies were able to detect a Russian cyber attack on the Oxford coronavirus vaccine computers after installing a security shield around the facility. Countries such as India and Brazil, where Russia was trying to market its own vaccine, have also been targeted by the campaign.

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