During 2015 Saudi Arabia faced 60 million cyber attacks
On May 1st, it was reported that according to a Saudi security expert, in 2015 the kingdom had faces 60 million cyber attacks particularly against the oil, gas, water desalination, banking and telecommunications sectors.
He added that Saudi Arabia is one of the most sensitive countries in the Middle East to such attacks because of the key role it has in economics and politics. He added that the trend to “connect everything to the internet”, mainly “smart cities”, requires special attention regarding the protection of these systems.
Regarding bank-related attacks, the expert noted that these are divided into three; Hacking into bank accounts, ATM Hacking and finally hacking to the bank systems themselves.
Other examples for such attacks are the ones made by “Anonymous”, which tend to attack from time to time Saudi Arabia. They do so, also under the name and the label #OpSaudi, mainly due to human rights violations. An example of this is a recently leaked file containing details of 305 email addresses and details of the Saudi Foreign Ministry officials.
To cope with these attacks, the president of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) declared, on March 30, that there is a system of surveillance and censorship in order to prevent any attempts of cyber attacks against government and private installations, among them acts of terrorism and money laundering. Also, there are special committees which purpose is “to examine every case and protect the information in the kingdom.”
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