Middle Eastern nations are associating with foreign countries to enhance their cyber capabilities

Several Middle Eastern countries like Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are using cyber warfare approaches to safeguard themselves. Despite the fact that these countries lack the required cyber capabilities, they are still able to execute sensitive cyber operations with the help of private companies and other actors.

Offensive cyber capabilities are technological tools for intruding into external digital networks to delete, steal or manipulate data. All six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar are developing these capabilities in the face of multiple threats.

As for the advanced surveillance tools, Middle Eastern states will continue relying on Western and Israeli private firms. They have been taking help from foreign nations like the US, the UK, Turkey, and Israel to obtain cyber warfare and hacking capabilities.

For instance, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE outsource most of their cyber development and surveillance tools from private contractors in the US, Israel, and the UK to conduct specific cyber operations.

UAE remained the target of cyber attack after establishing formal ties with Israel. Due to the normalisations in relations, the threats to their national online networks have increased multifolds.

The establishment of formal Israel-UAE ties last year, led to common worries for Iran — unleashed a flurry of bilateral deals in the cyberspace. Recently, Israel and the UAE shared intelligence and information related to Hezbollah’s cyber activities. Hezbollah was one of the cyber warfare tools of Iran.

The Hezbollah attack, revealed by an Israeli cyber defense firm, depicts that proxy for the terror organisation use software and techniques linked to Iranian state hackers. The aim is to penetrate servers in the US, Britain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, UAE and Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank.

Qatar too is taking help from multiple foreign partners throwing an extra caution to expand its offensive cyber capabilities. It had previously signed a bilateral agreement with Turkey to boost its cyber capabilities.

A few months back, Qatar signed an agreement with Italy-based firm Leonardo for providing cyber training to Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) for strengthening the resilience of digital infrastructure against potential cyber-attacks. With this the country is also equipping its team of cyber experts to execute similar attacks.

In 2013, China helped Iran by developing a national internet, known as SHOMA, independent of the World Wide Web. The partnership was expected to expand with a 25-year security deal that the two states have been negotiating till date. Iranian development in the field has contributed to its status as one of the regions’ most advanced cyber powers.

It is clear that the Middle Eastern nations are strengthening their resilience of digital infrastructure against potential cyber attacks through constant collaboration with the foreign countries.