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Cyber security experts form coronavirus taskforce to combat ransomware attacks

COVID-19 CTI League wants to protect frontline medical resources

3 Apr 2020

Cybersecurity experts across 65 countries have teamed up to combat ransomware attacks on hospitals during the coronavirus outbreak.

Giving themselves the moniker of COVID-19 CTI League, the group has come together to protect the technological infrastructure of frontline medical resources from hackers during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 CTI League touts itself as a community of sharing information with the goal of helping the medical sector during this difficult time. The league’s volunteers assist each other with tasks such as malware analysis, hunting queries and cyber investigations.

Ohad Zaidenberg, the founder of the project, is based in Israel. Other members of the COVID-19 CTI League management team include US-based Nate Warfield, Chris Mills and Marc Rogers.

“Since the coronavirus crisis came out, I understood that attacking against the medical sector is a game-changer that can cause death. I decided to create a community of cybersecurity experts that want to spend their free time and to use their abilities to protect the medical sector,” Zaidenberg told Cointelegraph.

“With my friends in the management team, we prove the real power of the infosec community. It gave us so much power to keep doing our job — to save a life.”

Around the world, hospitals have seen an increase in cyberattacks involving encrypting critical IT systems with malware. These online attackers have demanded Bitcoin as ransom for decryption keys. Unfortunately, hospitals with ageing IT infrastructures have become a prime target for these attacks during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 CTI League is searching for additional cybersecurity experts willing to join their ranks. For those interested in joining the COVID-19 CTI League in their endeavours, the league encourages them to visit their website.