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UAE: Cyberattacks in Arabic language on the rise in region, says top cybersecurity official
To counter fast-evolving threats due to different language models, firms are now shifting their focus on introducing intent-based solutions to pre-empt cyberattacks
- PUBLISHED: Thu 20 Feb 2025, 10:26 AM
Cybercriminals are increasingly using Arabic language for attacks as generative AI tools give them the ability to attack in any language, said a top cybersecurity official.
To counter fast-evolving threats due to different language models, cybersecurity firms are now shifting their focus on introducing intent-based solutions to pre-empt cyberattacks.
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Sumit Dhawan, CEO of cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, said generative AI tools give threat actors the ability to issue attacks in Arabic language, just as sophisticated as they can launch attacks in English or any other language.
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“Arabic language attacks are more common than they were before. Arabic is one of the top three languages in which attacks are being issued more so than in the past. Multi-channel attacks are no longer limited to email.
"Some attacks transform themselves. They are harmless when they're delivered to you, but they become harmful when you click on them. For each of these attacks, we have solutions that are language model based that can detect languages, including Arabic, for multi-channel attacks,” Dhawan told Khaleej Times in an interview.
“One of the things that we've seen globally is that personalised attacks tend to work better. In Arabic, they become a little more personalised. Mass mailing, for example, is not going to get hackers what they're looking for. The majority here in this region are Arabic speakers, and they use Arabic for communication. This is one of the reasons why we've seen Arabic being used more and more for cyberattacks,” Dhawan said on the sidelines of a conference organised by Proofpoint in Dubai on Wednesday.
Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, chairman of the UAE Cyber Security Council, also addressed the conference, where he highlighted that there was a 32 per cent increase in ransomware attacks and up to 18 per cent increase in DDoS, phishing and other attacks.
He elaborated that artificial intelligence (AI) is making it a lot easier for those threat actors to up the volume of local language attacks.
“Language and geography are no longer barriers to running sophisticated attacks because of the emergence of language-based model," said Al Kuwaiti.
He warned that if threat actors are going to use language models to keep rewriting messages, there is a need to detect the intent behind threats, which can only be determined by having a language model.
“And that's going to be the future case so it's built into our solutions and is coming into UAE in the next few weeks.”
He pointed out that employees’ behaviour and cybersecurity awareness builds resilience. “Data doesn’t have legs. It’s the people who leak information,” he added.
