Latest / DEEP INSIGHT / UAE hit by 640,000 Iran-linked cyberattacks in a single day

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UAE hit by 640,000 Iran-linked cyberattacks in a single day · DEEP INSIGHT

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  Speaker 1: UAE recorded as many as 640,000 cyber attacks in a
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  Speaker 1: single day. Mohamed Al-Kuwaiti, head of the UAE Cyber Security Council,
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  Speaker 1: said the impact of such attacks can go far beyond
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  Speaker 1: temporary service disruption with hackers targeting data and critical sectors
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  Speaker 1: like electricity, water and the wider economy. Well, cybersecurity is
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  Speaker 1: fast becoming a new geopolitical warground with heightened threats of
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  Speaker 1: Iranian cyber attacks in the region.
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  Speaker 2: The threat is.
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  Speaker 1: Also fueling concerns about the growing power of artificial intelligence
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  Speaker 1: within those cyber attacks. Well, major tech companies, including Microsoft, OpenAI, Alphabet, Anthropic, Amazon,
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  Speaker 1: have all called for collective action, warning that cyber attacks
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  Speaker 1: will become much more widespread and sophisticated in the coming months. Well,
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  Speaker 1: that threat has certainly been front and center here at
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  Speaker 1: the UAE. At JISEC Global 2026, RQ80 says artificial intelligence,
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  Speaker 1: geopolitical instability and rapidly evolving technology are reshaping the cyber landscape,
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  Speaker 1: warning that, quote, no single nation or organization. can address
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  Speaker 1: these challenges alone. And he joins me now live. And
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  Speaker 1: it's good to have you, sir. Thank you. I do
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  Speaker 1: want to start with that. It's my pleasure. 64, 640,000 number.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, all those attacks in a single day. When
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  Speaker 1: was that, sir? And on what sectors? What sectors were
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  Speaker 1: being attacked and by whom?
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  Speaker 2: So that number was yesterday.
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  Speaker 3: And if we go back, as a matter of fact,
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  Speaker 3: for the peak of many of those attacks, we go
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  Speaker 3: back towards April timeline and where we reached almost 800,000 attacks.
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  Speaker 3: And here we're not talking about the regular DDoS type
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  Speaker 3: of attack. Here we're talking about ransomware, supply chain, or
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  Speaker 3: even Viber malware attacks that needs to target our critical infrastructure,
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  Speaker 3: try to destruct or disrupt many of those critical infrastructures.
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  Speaker 3: The main three major critical infrastructure that we actually attacked
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  Speaker 3: are the energy, oil and gas, electricity, water. That was one.
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  Speaker 3: The second is focused on the government. As our government
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  Speaker 3: moving towards many of those digitized perspective, there was many
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  Speaker 3: attacks towards the critical infrastructure of the government in that perspective.
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  Speaker 2: Financial sector as well is the third. sector.
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  Speaker 3: And yes, all of those attacks were, as a matter
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  Speaker 3: of fact, detected proactively in one matter or another. We
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  Speaker 3: have great partners who actually really even responded to those
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  Speaker 3: attacks as per the concept of operation that we work on.
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  Speaker 3: And as we are here in JISEC and many of
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  Speaker 3: those great partners are presenting their solutions, all powered by AI,
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  Speaker 3: working together to, as a matter of fact, build up
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  Speaker 3: that resiliency.
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  Speaker 2: And that's where we're at now.
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  Speaker 1: So how serious were those attacks and were any successful?
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  Speaker 1: I mean, or how many were successful?
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  Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, there were two of them successful,
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  Speaker 3: but towards the private sector, not towards the government sector.
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  Speaker 3: And those are actually resulted in wiping some of the
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  Speaker 3: private sector as specified data. Alhamdulillah, there were ways of
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  Speaker 3: actually recovering these with many of the backups, with many
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  Speaker 3: of the historical backups. Yes, maybe it's not... a clean
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  Speaker 3: copy of what was really destroyed. But yes, the cost
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  Speaker 3: of any of those cyber attacks or data breaches actually
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  Speaker 3: reached to more than $ 4. 4 million in some perspectives. And
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  Speaker 3: the cost as well increases as the type of data
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  Speaker 3: that are actually sensitive, top secret, secret, or different type
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  Speaker 3: of data associated with that. The message that we're sending
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  Speaker 3: here is the resiliency. Many fragile and many investment infrastructure
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  Speaker 3: that we are really investing on depends on technologies. And
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  Speaker 3: they are and could be, God forbid, if there was
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  Speaker 3: an attack, could destruct, could destroy, could disrupt many of
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  Speaker 3: those critical infrastructures or the lifestyle that we are actually
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  Speaker 3: really depending on. UAE is one of the, alhamdulillah, nations
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  Speaker 3: that are actually already shifted towards digitization, towards all of
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  Speaker 3: our government services or many of the critical infrastructures that
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  Speaker 3: we have. So we need to protect that really in
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  Speaker 3: a timely manner.
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  Speaker 1: You cited higher numbers earlier on in the year. That,
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  Speaker 1: of course, was at the height of the Iran conflict.
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  Speaker 1: Have these cyber attacks then gotten worse since the start
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  Speaker 1: of the U.S. war with Iran? Who's behind these cyber attacks?
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  Speaker 1: Do you have any evidence that these are Iranian attacks?
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  Speaker 3: There are, yes, so many attributions, and this is what
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  Speaker 3: we call it, when we find who is behind any
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  Speaker 3: of those attacks. The root cause analysis that we've done,
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  Speaker 3: the conduct of many of the great partnerships, the information
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  Speaker 3: sharing that we have, the TTPs, the tactics and techniques
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  Speaker 3: and procedures used in order to conduct such attacks.
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  Speaker 2: And guess what?
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  Speaker 3: There was no internet in Iran, if we are really
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  Speaker 3: specifying that perspective. But the internet or the infrastructure that
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  Speaker 3: are used and built, even prior to the war itself,
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  Speaker 3: this is where most of those attacks were coming from.
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  Speaker 3: There was a whole botnet that are actually leveraged in
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  Speaker 3: order to conduct or perpetrate such attacks. And yes, there
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  Speaker 3: are great footprints that actually shows who's behind those attacks. Yes,
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  Speaker 3: Iran is one of the main players. IRGC is the
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  Speaker 3: specific one actually behind many of those aspects. But if
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  Speaker 3: you look around as well, who's supporting them, who's actually
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  Speaker 3: funding them from a virtual type of currencies, all of
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  Speaker 3: these are detected. All of these are actually, as a
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  Speaker 3: matter of fact, already proven with the great attributions of
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  Speaker 3: who's behind those attacks. The impact, though, we're not that devastated. Alhamdulillah,
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  Speaker 3: we have a great early warning.
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  Speaker 2: System that allows us to do actually this.
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  Speaker 3: And they do continue, yes, until today, the 640,000 attacks
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  Speaker 3: we saw yesterday.
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  Speaker 2: For example, was that.
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  Speaker 3: And it is continuing to attack in that perspective, yes,
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  Speaker 3: with a lower number as we've seen previously in the start.
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  Speaker 1: How quickly is AI accelerating the cyber threat? And conversely,
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  Speaker 1: how are you using AI to combat these cyber threats?
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  Speaker 3: So definitely AI have accelerated the cyber attacks dramatically. There
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  Speaker 3: are the way of coding, the way of actually exploiting data,
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  Speaker 3: the way of coding and really writing this ransomware or
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  Speaker 3: Viber and many of those aspects. Now, those malware GPTs
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  Speaker 3: or ways of actually developing such attacks or such weapons
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  Speaker 3: or cyber weapons are really exceeding in many of those, again,
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  Speaker 3: those who use this technology in a negative way. And yes,
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  Speaker 3: there are so many of those entities who could leverage
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  Speaker 3: or use that in that negative way.
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  Speaker 2: However, in the contemporary, where we actually.
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  Speaker 3: Leverage AI to detect, to defend, to disrupt to really
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  Speaker 3: take care of many of those, protect and prevent many
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  Speaker 3: of those attacks. We leverage those data and we actually
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  Speaker 3: distinguish between the right data and the noise data in
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  Speaker 3: that perspective and come up with the right detection measures
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  Speaker 3: as well as response in this perspective. It's very important
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  Speaker 3: to bring the partnership piece on that aspect since we
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  Speaker 3: are depending on so many of our partners, service providers,
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  Speaker 3: critical infrastructures, entities who are actually helping us in doing
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  Speaker 3: many of those aspects and that's the message we are
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  Speaker 3: sending here as a matter of fact. Partnership is the
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  Speaker 3: key behind many of those attacks as we do in
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  Speaker 3: the real kinetic type of warfare as well.
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  Speaker 1: And you're talking about human partnerships, of course. And I
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  Speaker 1: do want to press you on the news of the
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  Speaker 1: past week or week and a half as we digest
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  Speaker 1: the reports of the Hugging Face incident. This wasn't a
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  Speaker 1: person or state. It was AI itself collaborating and launching
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  Speaker 1: an attack or a cyber attack effectively itself. out of
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  Speaker 1: the control of humans. How worried should we be? How
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  Speaker 1: worried or concerned are you about that as a threat,
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  Speaker 1: the very threat of AI itself on critical infrastructure and
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  Speaker 1: other assets here in the UAE and around the world?
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  Speaker 3: So definitely we need to worry about many of those, again,
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  Speaker 3: agent or agentic frameworks. If we are not putting the
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  Speaker 3: right guardrails, if we are not putting the right compliances,
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  Speaker 3: everything that we bring towards the government infrastructures, there is
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  Speaker 3: a whole test and validation perspective we do for that
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  Speaker 3: technology in order to see what is the input, what
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  Speaker 3: is the output, what is the action or the ways
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  Speaker 3: of actually really treating or analyzing many of.
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  Speaker 2: These data structures. in that perspective.
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  Speaker 3: So yes, if it's not followed those right compliances, those
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  Speaker 3: agents could do something that are not intending to. And
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  Speaker 3: this is why we need that collaboration with everybody on this.
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  Speaker 3: Everybody designing their agent differently. Everybody has different APIs or
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  Speaker 3: even tools to allow this agent to actually go to.
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  Speaker 3: And this is where that specific hugging face as well
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  Speaker 3: as that specific agent. It was in a sandbox. Yes,
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  Speaker 3: it was in a controlled environment, though. It's a proof
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  Speaker 3: that this could go wrong. And this is where we
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  Speaker 3: need definitely to take care of many of these technologies
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  Speaker 3: as we design it. We need to have security from
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  Speaker 3: the beginning always in developing any of those agents. And
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  Speaker 3: that's what we are actually really putting in that perspective.
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  Speaker 3: UAE was one of the great nations who actually issued
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  Speaker 3: ethics of AI using of many of those compliances whenever
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  Speaker 3: we're building a genetic framework. 50% of our government services
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  Speaker 3: will be moving towards an agentic framework soon. And this
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  Speaker 3: is where many of those compliances are based on those
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  Speaker 3: best practices, as well as many of those international standards
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  Speaker 3: as well that we leverage and we use.