After Qatar, Egypt government defamed by hackers by posting pornographic content

Cyber attacks, which have been rising in the Middle Eastern states over the past few years, represent a growing risk for both public and private operations. Private-sector and government websites have been repeatedly targeted by ransom ware, malicious software, and virus attacks etc.

There have been numerous instances wherein Middle Eastern government organisations are being hacked. For instance, the hacking of Qatar’s QNA website on 24th May 2017, proved to be a major turning point for Qatar as post that it was tagged as country supporting terrorism in the region. Though, Turkey helped Qatar to reverse the operation and identify the hackers huge damage to its reputation was caused.

Now, Egypt seems to be seems to have fallen in the line of such attacks. Recently, Egyptian account of the Administrative Prosecution office “Watan” was exposed on the social networking site “Instagram”. Hacking was done by unknown party and posting pornographic pictures on it.

The hackers published several offensive and inappropriate photos on the official page of the Administrative Prosecution. The Administrative Prosecution said it had investigating the matter after several pornographic photos were published on its Instagram account.

The administrative prosecution took hours to resolve the issue and restore its account. In a statement, the office said that all legal measures have been taken and the account was restored, adding that the perpetrators will be held accountable.

According to a report released by cyber-security firm Kaspersky two years ago, Egypt is the country most vulnerable to malware, cyber theft, and information hacking in the Middle East.

The report found that malware attacks and cyber theft on Egyptians increased by a shocking 447% from 2018 to 2019. A large percentage of these were led by fake accounts and fake apps, which asked users for access to programmes and data such as camera, microphone, calendar, GPS location, personal data, contact list and financial information.

In the light of the recent events it is clear that most Middle countries do not have a self-sufficient cyber operations capability. While few powerful nations like Israel and Iran are better equipped to handle the rising threats of cyber attacks, other nations still developing their cyber skills or taking help from foreign firms.