Qatar taking precautionary measures for the upcoming FIFA World cup 2022 against Cyberattacks
Over the last few years, Qatar has faced numerous cyber-attacks that were first recognized during the blockade and have continued to increase since. This year, Qatar got the opportunity to organize the FIFA World cup 2022. With this, the threat of cyber-attacks has increased over the hosting nation. Several reports have also predicted that cyber crimes are expected to increase given that it might serve as a golden chance for hackers to commit various cyber frauds.
Qatar has faced numerous hacking campaigns designed to harm the reputation of Qatar nation on the global stage. Recently, an investigation by Eekad (an open-source intelligence platform in the Middle East) revealed the layers of anti-Qatar platform QLeaks that involved thousands of dubious accounts and suspected bots featuring specific hashtags that attempted to promote alleged public dissatisfaction towards Qatar’s administration. The four-month-long investigation traced the fake accounts; mysterious pages as well as general content intended to run an anti-Qatar campaign linked to UAE.
In 2021, Al Jazeera Media Network (an Arab-speaking TV network with some programs in English, headquarters in Doha) experienced 4 days of severe cyber attacks ranging from DDoS to account hijacking and malware. The cyber attacks were deployed with an aim to get into the system and disrupt its regular functioning, and control news outlets.
In 2019, Qatar Airways suffered from a massive phishing campaign deployed via WhatsApp messages to their users. The attackers send the message to the WhatsApp users that stated that Qatar airways give away free tickets for their anniversary and users have to complete the survey and send the message to other 15 Whatsapp users. To stop this phishing campaign, Qatar Airways had to issue an official statement regarding the attack. The statement asked users to not follow the link and buy tickets from their websites or travel agencies. The phishing message over Whatsapp was still sent around for more than a month, even after the declaration of the official statement.
In 2017, the website of the Qatar State News agency got hacked during the diplomatic crisis and numerous fake offensive stories were published on its website. The cyber attack was linked to the Russian hackers first but then the US Intelligence officials claimed that they found the connection to the UAE. The latter denied any allegations. During this hacking situation, Turkey helped Qatar in identifying the five suspects that were involved in the hacking of the Qatar News Agency (QNA). Since then Turkey become the ‘cyber ally’ of the Qatar nation and there were many bilateral ties signed between Turkey and Qatar based on enhancing Qatar’s cyber capabilities to sustain its developmental position.
Now, Turkey is also providing cyber aid to Qatar for the upcoming FIFA world cup 2022, as the Emir of Qatar has turned to its cyber ally ‘Turkey’ for strengthening the security of the FIFA World cup 2022. To accomplish this cyber security task, Turkey sent its MIT officers (Turkey’s Intelligence Service) to Doha to work on security for the World Cup event.
According to the report by Morocco World News, the Emir of Qatar had also requested Rabat’s assistance for the security of the major sporting event FIFA World Cup 2022. After testing the capabilities and skills of 95 entities with verifying their ability to defend themselves from cyber attacks, the idea of the training program for the prevention of cybercrime originated.
The idea for the training was generated with an intention n to increase the productivity of employees and specialists in the domain of information and technology (IT) with security for Qatar’s government agencies.
According to Dalal Al- Aqeedi (Director of the National Cyber Excellence Department), a total of 15,000 people including 591 trainees from school leaders, 10,175 trainees from teachers, and 2,638 trainees from administrators benefited from this initiative.
In the last, we can say that the Qatar nation is doing their way best to make this event successful among the world. So, that this event will leave its footprint in the books of history for the upcoming generation.
