© OLIVIER DOULIERY - AFPDeputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo speaks during a news conference over ransomware cyberattacks, at the Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C. last week.
The U.S. Treasury Department said on Sunday it entered a partnership with Israel to combat ransomware.
Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo met with Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Director General of the National Cyber Directorate Yigal Unna in Israel on Sunday to establish a bilateral partnership, the department said in a statement
The announcement follows a virtual meeting aimed at tackling ransomware, which was held at the White House in October with the European Union and more than 30 countries, including Israel.
At that meeting,
Adeyemo asked for international cooperation to address the abuse of virtual currency and disrupt the ransomware business model.A broader U.S.-Israeli task force was also launched Sunday to address issues related to fintech and cybersecurity, the Treasury Department said.
Comment: What this likely means is that the U.S. will be working more closely with the Israelis in the development of each country's respective
CBDC. Which makes the
ransomware attacks highly convenient for these countries, and others, who've needed a justifiable pretext for rolling out a technology that will give central bankers
absolute control over people's money and, by extension, the people themselves.
RT
reports:
The Israeli government has recently attempted to distance itself from the country's NSO Group, which was found to be providing spy technology to foreign state customers in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and India, among others. Spyware created by the group has been detected on the devices of journalists and human rights activists around the world, and was even reportedly used to spy on French President Emmanuel Macron.
Earlier this month, Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid argued in a press conference that NSO Group was "a private company" and "not a governmental project," and therefore had "nothing to do with the policies of the Israeli government."
The company, however, was given permission by the Israeli government to sell its services to customers in Saudi Arabia.
NSO Group and another Israeli spyware company, Candiru, were added to a US trade blacklist this month, with the US government ruling that such firms' technology was used "maliciously" to target "government officials, journalists, businesspeople, artists, activists, academics, and embassy workers."
Putin has been calling for real, multi-lateral cyber-security cooperation for a decade now, but he's ignored while these two, thick as thieves in holding companies and countries to ransom, continue their plundering ways. Expect more critical systems to 'mysteriously go offline' in the coming weeks and months...
R.C.