Saudi Arabian cybersecurity officials and experts held an emergency meeting today in Riyadh, the nation's capital, following cyberattacks against several government facilities.
The official Saudi Press Agency said: “In recent weeks [attacks] targeted government institutions and vital installations in the kingdom.” Saudi officials declined to name the government agencies targeted, the extent of the attacks or who was behind them. The Saudi Press Agency said the meeting’s agenda included establishing procedures to secure and protect government websites. The agency also said the cyberattacks originated from abroad and that the attackers had developed malware to spy on their victims. Such espionage has intensified in recent years, whether for financial gain or to gather intelligence. Almost every country has been targeted by these operations these days, with foreign intelligence agencies trying to obtain information from rival countries. Even various cybercrime syndicates have launched cyberattacks on government agencies with the aim of gathering information and selling it on the black market. One example is the cyberespionage group Mofang, which spied on the Singaporean government and stole information that eventually ended up in the hands of a Chinese company that won a tender for a local development project. In Saudi Arabia’s past, the most notorious cyberattack was a 2012 data breach at Aramco, the state-owned oil and gas company.
