UAE hit by ~640,000 Iran-linked cyberattacks in a single day

UAE recorded as many as 640,000 cyber  attacks in a single day. Muhammad Al Qati, head of the UAE cyber security council, said the  impact of such attacks can go far beyond temporary. service disruption with hackers targeting data  and critical sectors like electricity, water, and the wider economy. Well, cyber security is  fast becoming a new geopolitical war ground with.

heightened threats of Iranian cyber attacks  in the region. The threat is also fueling. concerns about the growing power of artificial  intelligence within those cyber attacks. Well, major tech companies including  Microsoft, OpenAI, Alphabet, Anthropic, Amazon have all called for collective  action, warning that cyber attacks will become. much more widespread and sophisticated in the  coming months. Well, that threat has certainly.

been front and center here at the UAE at JICK  Global 2026. RQ8 says artificial intelligence, geopolitical instability, and rapidly evolving  technology are reshaping the cyber landscape, warning that quote, "No single nation or  organization can address these challenges. alone." And he joins me now live. And it's good  to have you, sir. Thank you. Um, I do want to. start with that. It's my pleasure. 64 uh 640,000  number. I mean, all those attacks in a single day.

When was that sir? Um and on what sectors?  What sectors were being attacked and by whom? So that number was yesterday. And if we go back  as a matter of fact for the peak of many of those. attacks, we go back towards April timeline and  where we reached almost 800,000 attacks. And here. we're not talking about the regular DDOS type  of attack. Here we're talking about ransomware,

supply chain or even wyber malware attacks that  needs to uh target our critical infrastructure try. to destruct or disrupt many of those crit critical  infrastructures. The main three major critical. infrastructure that we actually attacked are the  energy oil and gas electricity water that was one. The second is focused on the government as our  government moving towards many of those digitized. perspective. There was many attacks towards the  critical infrastructure of the government in that. perspective. Financial sector as well is the third  sector and yes all of those attacks were as a.

matter of fact detected proactively in one matter  or another. We have great partners who actually. really even responded to those attacks as per the  concept of operation that we work on and as we are. here in Jisk and many of those great partners  are presenting their solutions all powered by. AI working together to as a matter of fact build  up that resiliency and that's where we at now. Sir.

how serious were those attacks? Um, and were any  successful? I mean, or how many were successful? As a matter of fact, there were two of them  successful, but towards the private sector, not towards the government sector. And  those are actually resulted in wiping. some of the private sector specified data.  Alhamdulillah, there were ways of actually.

recovering these with many of the backups,  with many of the historical backups. Yes, maybe it's not a clean copy of what was really  destroyed, but yes, the cost of any of those. cyber attacks or data breaches actually reach  to more than $4.4 million in some perspectives. and the cost as well increases as the type of  data that are actually sensitive, top secret, secret or different type of take data associated  with that. The message that we're sending here is.

the resiliency. Many fragile and many investment  infrastructure that we are really investing on. are depends on technologies and they are and  could be god forbid if there was an attack. could distract could destroy could disrupt  many of those critical infrastructures or the. lifestyle that we are actually really depending  on. UAE is one of the alhamdulillah nations that. are actually already shifted towards digitization  towards all of our government services or many of.

the critical infrastructures that we have. So we  need to protect that really in a timely manner. You cited higher numbers um earlier on in this in  the year that of course was at the height of the. uh Iran conflict. Have these cyber attacks then  gotten worse since the start of the US war with. Iran? Who's behind these cyber attacks? Do you  um have any evidence that these are uh Iranian?

There are yes so many attributions  and this is what we call it when we. find who is behind any of those attacks.  the root cause analysis that we've done, the conducted of many of the great partnership,  the information sharing that we have, the TTPs, the tactics and techniques and procedures used  in order to conduct such attacks. And guess what?

There was no internet in Iran if we are really  specifying that perspective. But the internet or. the infrastructure that are used and built even  prior to the war itself, this is where the most. of those attacks were coming from. There was a  whole uh botnetss that are actually leveraged. in order to conduct orbit perpetrate such attacks  and yes there are a great footprints that actually. shows who's behind those attack. Yes, Iran is  one of the main player. IRGC is the specific.

one actually behind many of those aspects. But  if you look around as well, who's supporting. them? Who's actually uh funding them from a  virtual type of currencies? All of these are. detected. All of these are actually as a matter  of fact already proven with a great attributions. of who's behind those attacks. The impact though  we're not that devastated. Alhamdulillah we have. a great early warning systems that allows it  to do actually this and they do continue. Yes. Until today the 640,000 attack we saw yesterday  for example was that and it is continuing to.

attack in that perspective. Yes. With a lower  number as we seen previously in the start. How quickly is AI accelerating the cyber threat  and conversely how are you using AI to combat. these cyber threats? So definitely AI have  accelerated the cyber attacks dramatically.

There are the way of coding, the way of actually  exploiting data, the way of coding and really. writing this ransomware or wyber and many of those  aspects. Now those uh malware GPTs or ways of. actually developing such attacks or such weapons  or cyber weapons are really exceeding in many of. those again those who who use this technology  in a negative way and yes there are so many of. those entities who could leverage or use that in  that negative way. However, in in the contemporary.

where we actually leverage AI to detect, to  defend, to disrupt, to really take care of. many of those uh protect and prevent many of those  attacks, we leverage those data and we actually. distinguish between the uh right data and the  noise data in that perspective and come up with. the right detection measures as well as response.  In this perspective, it's very important to bring. the partnership piece on that aspects since we  are depending on so many of our partners, service.

provider, critical infrastructures, entities  who are actually really helping us in doing many. of those aspects and that's the message we are  sending here. As a matter of fact, partnership. is the key behind many of those attacks as we  do in the real kinetic type of warfare as well. And you're talking about And you're talking about  human partnerships, of course. And I do want to. press you on the news of the past week um or week  and a half as we digest the reports of the hugging.

face incident. This wasn't a person or state.  It was AI itself collaborating and launching. um an attack or a cyber attack effectively  itself out of the control of humans. How. worried should we be? How worried or concerned are  you about u that as a threat? the very threat of.

AI itself on critical infrastructure and other  assets here in the UAE and around the world. So definitely we need to worry about many  of those again agent or agentic frameworks. If we are not putting the right guard rails,  if we are not putting the right compliances, everything that we bring towards the  government infrastructures, there is. a whole test and validation perspective we do for  that technology in order to see what is the input,

what is the output, what is the action or the  ways of actually really treating or analyzing. many of these data in that perspective. So yes,  if it's not followed those right compliances, those agents could do something that are not  intending to. And this is why we need that. collaboration with everybody on this. Everybody  designing their agent differently. Everybody. has different APIs or even tools to allow  this agentic to actually uh go to and this.

is where that specific hugging face as well as  that specific agent. It was in a sandbox. Yes, it was in a controlled environment. Though it's  a proof that this could go wrong and this is. where we need definitely to to take care of  many of these technologies as we design it. we need to have security from the beginning  always in developing any of those agents and. that's what we are actually really putting in  that perspective UAE was one of the great hima.

nations who actually issued ethics of AI using  of many of those compliances whenever we're. building agentic framework 50% of our government  services will be moving towards an agent authentic. framework soon. And this is where many of those  compliances are based on those best practices. as well as many of those international  standards as well that we leverage and we.