From suspected Iranian cyberattacks on Saudi Arabia to leaked emails causing consternation among nominally allied Arab nations, state-sponsored hacks have become an increasing worry among countries across the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defending against such attacks has become a major industry in Dubai, as the city-state home to the world\u2019s tallest building and the long-haul airline Emirates increasingly bills itself as an interconnected \u201csmart city\u201d where robots now deliver wedding certificates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They fear a massive attack on the scale of what Saudi Arabia suffered through in 2012 with Shamoon, a computer virus that destroyed systems of the kingdom\u2019s state-run oil company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was and still is the worst physical attack we\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d said Tony Cole, a vice president at FireEye Inc., a cybersecurity firm headquartered in Milpitas, California. \u201cDestruction was what the adversary had in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added: \u201cThese are going to get worse as we look at more and more nation states that have some capability and quite literally they don\u2019t care how they look on the world stage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran was the target of much of those fears and a point of discussion at an event Tuesday that Cole\u2019s company held in Dubai. The Islamic Republic developed its cyber capabilities in 2011 after the Stuxnet computer virus destroyed thousands of centrifuges involved in Iran\u2019s contested nuclear program. Stuxnet is widely believed to be an American and Israeli creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran is believed to be behind the spread of Stuxnet in 2012, which hit Saudi Arabian Oil Co. and Qatari natural gas producer RasGas. The virus deleted hard drives and then displayed a picture of a burning American flag on computer screens. Saudi Aramco ultimately shut down its network and destroyed over 30,000 computers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A second version of Shamoon raced through Saudi government computers in late 2016, this time having the destroyed computers display a photograph of the body of 3-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi, who drowned fleeing his country\u2019s civil war. Suspicion again fell on Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Iran isn\u2019t the only country in the region apparently with capabilities. An Emirati activist named Ahmed Mansoor became famous in August 2016 when he worked with security experts to reveal three previously undisclosed weaknesses in Apple\u2019s mobile operating system from him being targeted with a phishing text message he didn\u2019t click on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mansoor and others believed the United Arab Emirates was behind him being targeted, as it involved so-called \u201czero day\u201d exploits that can be worth over a million dollars each. Mansoor was arrested by UAE authorities in March for his online posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a more recent case, Qatar alleges hackers using iPhones in the UAE broke into the website of its state-run Qatar News Agency and in April planted inflammatory comments attributed to its ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. That hack later spiraled a short time later into the ongoing boycott of Qatar by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt. The UAE has denied being responsible for the hack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked Tuesday about the Qatar News Agency hack by The Associated Press, Cole said: \u201cIt was a fascinating instance … of politics moving into the cyberespionage realm.\u201d He declined to elaborate, saying: \u201cI don\u2019t have information I wish to cover on that one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Around the same time, a group began publishing embarrassing emails from the account of the Emirati ambassador to the United States, suggesting a tic-for-tat hack. Qatar has denied being involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But all that focus on government computers may distract from a bigger threat on the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As more household devices like coffeemakers and refrigerators find themselves connected to the internet, determined hackers can use them as a means to launch major attacks in the Gulf and elsewhere. That was the case during the October 2016 attack on Dyn Co., a firm that manages internet traffic, which caused outages to sites including Twitter, PayPal, Pinterest, Reddit and Spotify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n