12 Jan Over 800 Kuwaiti websites hacked in ‘a serious data incident’
A total of 887 Kuwaiti websites have been breached and more than 4,360 data files leaked in a ‘serious data incident’ linked to The Dark Web.
The hacked websites vary between government and private institutions, and include various industries such as education, communications and e-commerce.
The alleged data breach has occurred against a complicated backdrop of cyber security, including President of the Kuwait Society for Information Security, Safa’a Zaman, being referred to the criminal court after appearing on Kuwait TV Talk talking about the high risk of exposure of the state’s data. The government denied there was any issue and didn’t take any measures to bolster the nation’s information security.
It’s not the first time that Kuwaiti websites have been hacked and it’s unlikely to be the last. Several months ago an attack named ‘anthrax’ targeted government and private websites and stole money from banking and financial websites.
At the end of last year, new research from Rackspace technology revealed that just 48% of organisations in the Middle East had confidence in their ability to understand the cybersecurity threat landscape in relation to their own business. With serious data leaks – like the most recent – becoming more common, and fraudsters developing ever-more complicated techniques it may be time for Kuwait to do more and introduce international standards for cybersecurity to protect from such breaches.