UAE

A United Arab Emirates (UAE) deal to purchase two intelligence satellites from France worth almost 3.4 billion dirhams (US $930 million) is in jeopardy after the discovery of what was described as “security compromising components.”

A high-level UAE source said the two high-resolution Pleiades-type Falcon Eye military observation satellites contained two specific US-supplied components that provide a back door to the highly secure data transmitted to the ground station.

The UAE’s security threat landscape has increased last year due to surge in cybercriminals compared to 2011, a top official at research firm Symantec told Gulf News.

“Within the Middle East, the UAE ranks second for phishing hosts and fourth for outbound malicious code and spam,” said Bulent Teksoz, chief security strategist of emerging markets at Symantec.

He said the government authorities in the UAE are doing a lot as cyber security is a critical issue. Overall, the UAE’s security threat profile ranking rose to 40 globally in 2012 compared to 46 in 2011.

The Dubai Police have arrested a cyber crime gang who were able to transfer more than Dh7 million from exchange companies in Dubai, a senior official from Dubai Police said.

Major General Khamis Matter Al Mazeina, acting chief of Dubai Police, said on Sunday that a gang of Asians and Africans work with hackers in order to enter different websites and systems of different companies here in Dubai in order to transfer money inside and outside the country.

For three days inside New York University Abu Dhabi’s purple campus in the Emirati capital, delegates from universities in sixteen countries programmed socially minded apps at the second NYUAD Hackathon For Social Good in the Arab World, the brainchild of the university’s computer science professor Sana Odeh.

Eighty students were coached by 30 mentors during the program (academics and professionals from Google, Microsoft, NASA, among others), which culminated in an evening pitch to the panel of twenty judges.

Israeli hackers have claimed credit for downing websites run by the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX).



The digital operation was apparently conducted in retaliation for the hacking of two prominent Israeli sites on Monday: the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) and El Al (Israel Airlines).