US, Israel bolster cyber threat intelligence sharing

CNN reports that the U.S. and Israel have finalized an agreement aimed at strengthening both countries' cyber defenses, enabling the sharing of key information regarding separate cyberattacks against their respective infrastructures. Revealed in the intelligence sharing was a previously unreported failed distributed denial-of-service attack against the U.S. Treasury Department's computer servers between February and March conducted by pro-Russian hackers in retaliation to U.S. sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, according to Treasury Department Deputy Assistant for Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Todd Conklin. Israel has also divulged with the Treasury technical details regarding a separate Iranian-led DDoS attack in March that disrupted some government websites, said Conklin. Aside from accelerating the trade of threat data between both countries, the agreement may also advance cybersecurity drills between U.S. and Israeli financial firms, Conklin noted. "Israel has a really strong public-private partnership in this space. So they have access to a lot more real-time vulnerability data impacting ... not only government systems, but also their broader private sector," he added.