Officials and cyber-security experts from Saudi Arabia held urgent” talks today in Riyadh, the nation’s capital, following cyber-attacks against several government facilities.
The official Saudi Press Agency said that “in recent weeks [attacks] targeted government institutions and vital installations in the kingdom.”
Saudi officials declined to name which government agencies the attacks targeted, the attack’s extent, or who was behind them.
The Saudi Press Agency says the meeting’s agenda included topics to set up procedures to fix and protect government websites.
The Agency also said that the cyber-attacks originated from abroad and that attackers deployed malware to spy on their victims.
Cyber-espionage, either for economic gain or intelligence gathering, has intensified in recent years. Almost every country is targeted these days by such operations, with foreign intelligence agencies trying to gain insight information on rival countries.
Cyber-crime syndicates also launch cyber-attacks on government agencies with the purpose of gathering information to sell on the black market.
One example is the Mofang cyber-espionage group which spied on the Singapore government and stole information that eventually ended up in the hands of a Chinese company that won the bidding for a local development project.
In Saudi Arabia’s past, the most notorious cyber-attack was a data breach in 2012 at Aramco, the state’s petroleum and natural gas company. Officials suspected Iranian hackers.
