🔴 UAE, Saudi Arabia Face Onslaught of Increasingly Complex Cyberattacks

The Middle East continues to see an uptick in cyberattacks, with a surge in finacially-motivated threats despite the focus on the widening military conflict in the region.

The United Arab Emirates, Iran, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia accounted for about two-thirds of all attacks (67%) discovered through open source methods, which scan for attack information on Dark Web forums and on threat actors' Telegram channels, according to threat intelligence firm Positive Technologies. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have both aggressively pursued digital transformation of their public and private sectors, leading to larger attack surface areas and more targets of interest to cybercriminals. Meanwhile, Iran's media organizations and telecom infrastructure are typically popular targets of attack, says Darya Lavrova, lead analyst at Positive Technologies.