A group of cybersecurity experts from around the world — including from companies like Microsoft and Okta — have teamed to help organizations fight COVID-19 related hacking and phishing attacks.
The restricted-invite COVID-19 Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) League consists of cyberthreat intelligence experts, incident responders, and other security experts experienced at detecting, responding, and neutralizing threats.
Initially, at least, league members will prioritize efforts on helping hospitals and healthcare facilities fend off ransomware and other threats from attackers seeing to exploit the general mayhem triggered by the COVID-19 health crisis. In recent weeks, security researchers have reported a surge in attacks — especially phishing — targeted at a broad set of organizations.
But the COVID-19 CTI League's mission is broader than helping just healthcare entities. It will also work to neutralize other cyberthreats looking to exploit the current pandemic, according to a brief description on the group's website.
The site identified the four individuals who launched the effort: Ohad Zaidenberg, lead cyber intelligence researcher at Israeli firm ClearSky Security; Nate Warfield and Chris Mills, security researchers at Microsoft; and Marc Rogers, vice president of security at Okta and head of security operations at DefCon.
"Attackers are using a mixture of old, reskinned, and relatively new malware to attack users during the COVID-19 pandemic," Rogers said. "Their diversity indicates a global reach and a wide variety of campaigns. In essence, we are looking at a cybercrime gold rush."
Yet few details are currently publicly available on how exactly the volunteer community of security experts will actually help fight the surge in hacking and malicious activity.
Comments that Zaidenberg made to NBC N ..
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