The goal of the hacker named Shrine is simple:to help scientific research on the Covid-19 coronavirus. He and his group used an "unsavory" platform to illegally obtain over 5,000 coronavirus research papers. For the group, making these documents public allows researchers with limited means not to have to pay in order to have access to them.
With a global toll of 2.25 million cases for more than 150,000 deaths , the Covid-19 pandemic is more serious than we thought. Scientific research continues, whether it is the development of a vaccine or the development of another treatment. For the hacker calling himself Shrine, it was necessary that all scientific publications dealing with the different coronaviruses be public. In a post on Reddit on April 15, 2020, a user recalled that the hacker in question executed himself and his group. They extracted no less than 5,000 documents related to coronaviruses and posted them on Reddit.
Shrine and his group did not like the blocking of studies by means of "paywalls". These are digital barriers forcing users to pay for access to a publication. However, these paywalls allow a profit margin of 35 to 40% for the editor. For the hacker, the paying nature of most studies is ridiculous, while the Covid-19 is currently wreaking havoc in the world.
On the Reddit post, some users believe that there was no hacking at all. Shrine and his group would have simply used the controversial Sci-Hub platform , on which were present all the documents published since 1968. Anyway, these documents are now public. In addition, Shrine took the opportunity to appeal to publishing platforms. This is a petition simply calling for the removal of paywalls.
According to the person concerned, these barriers would limit scientific research on Covid-19. It is true that paywalls represent a barrier to collaboration between different researchers. This is especially true in developing countries. For the latter, it is financially difficult to acquire the knowledge present in these documents.
At the end of January 2020, the Covid-19 was replicated outside of China for the first time, namely in Australia. This was very good news since the scientists had shared their research with laboratories around the world integer through the World Health Organization (WHO). Long before that, Chinese researchers had sequenced the genome and developed new diagnostic tools. However, the latter unfortunately did not want to share their results.
