The Middle East has become a hotbed for cybercrime, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia bearing the brunt of an onslaught of increasingly complex attacks. According to threat intelligence firm Positive Technologies, these two nations absorbed 50% of all cyberattacks recorded across the Gulf region in the first half of this year.
The reason behind this surge is twofold. On one hand, both countries have aggressively pursued digital transformation of their public and private sectors, creating a larger attack surface area that’s ripe for exploitation by cybercriminals. On the other hand, the ongoing military conflict in the region has drawn the attention of hacktivists and politically aligned groups, who see these nations as prime targets.
Positive Technologies gathered its data through open-source intelligence (OSINT) methods, which involve scouring Dark Web forums, Telegram channels, and aggregators tracking website defacements, malware operations, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The vast majority of cyberattacks likely remain unreported due to concerns over reputational harm.
According to the firm’s analysis, organizations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia experienced nearly 2,700 attacks per week in the past half-year, compared to about 2,300 attacks per week for a typical organization across the globe. The most popular attack type was exploits for information-disclosure vulnerabilities, which impacted 62% of affected organizations.
What’s striking is the range of activity observed in these nations. While information disclosure was the leading vulnerability exploit type, remote code execution and authentication bypass also featured heavily. Additionally, organizations in the region are seeing higher rates of ransomware, botnets, and information-stealing malware than global averages.
The conflict between the US, Israel, and Iran has driven many cyberattacks, but the proportion of DDoS attacks has noticeably declined. The UAE and Saudi Arabia make up two of the strongest economies in the region and were targeted with about half of all cyberattacks – 35% and 15%, respectively. Government targets saw more than a quarter of all attacks (27%), while cross-sector attacks affected nearly the same proportion (23%).
The exploitation of vulnerabilities has become the most popular initial access vector, accounting for 38% of all cyberattacks, and more than half of these attacks (58%) led to business disruption. As a result, highly visible cyberattacks have given way to more hard-to-detect intrusions, with complex, targeted attacks focusing on stealthy infiltration of critical infrastructure, establishing persistence, and data gathering.
In conclusion, the rising tide of cybercrime in the Middle East highlights the importance of robust cybersecurity measures for organizations operating in this region. With the threat landscape becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated, it’s essential that businesses prioritize incident response planning, vulnerability management, and employee education to mitigate the risks associated with these attacks.
Source: Dark Reading — 2026-09-23