Gulf businesses see rising threat from AI-assisted cyber attacks

'Hacktivists' using AI for more effective 'distributed denial-of-service' strikes

Rising geopolitical tensions have led to increasingly sophisticated and potential harmful distributed denial-of-service attacks, cyber protection solutions provider NetScout has found

The 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June and heightened tension between India and Pakistan triggered "unprecedented" distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in the first half of this year, a report has found.

A DDoS attack is a cyber attack in which actors and groups use co-ordination and several computers to overwhelm a network server with internet traffic, which then prevents users from accessing websites.

"The India-Pakistan conflict saw 'hacktivist' groups target the Indian government and financial sectors in May, while the Iran-Israel conflict generated more than 15,000 attacks against Iran and 279 against Israel in June," cyber protection solutions provider NetScout Systems said in its report.

Trails from an Indian air defence system are seen above Jammu during a Pakistani strike on May 9. AFP

"DDoS attacks have evolved into precision-guided weapons of geopolitical influence capable of destabilising critical infrastructure."

The cyber protection firm said it had monitored more than eight million DDoS attacks in the first half of the year.

Throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, NetScout said it had observed more than 3.2 million DDoS attacks.

In the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia received the highest frequency of attempted attacks, with 270,179 recorded. The UAE was subjected to 3,477 attempted attacks, but had the longest DDoS attack duration, averaging 27 minutes.

NetScout said increasingly sophisticated botnet-driven attacks, which usually involve the hijacking of someone else's computer to execute a DDoS attack, are also on the rise.

Some botnet attacks, however, also involve people using their own computers along with other users to co-ordinate attacks.

Besides potentially preventing access to various digital infrastructure and citizen services, DDoS strikes can also be costly for businesses.

"Organisations must recognise that traditional defences are no longer sufficient,” said Richard Hummel, director of threat intelligence at NetScout. Cyber protection tools that deliver "intelligence-driven and proven DDoS defences" are paramount, he added.

NetScout said AI was being used in DDoS attacks as a way of bypassing Captcha tools designed to block potentially nefarious automated activity

NetScout said cyber criminals are starting to use artificial intelligence tools to simplify their workflow and increase the likelihood of DDoS attacks being successful with significantly less effort.

An earlier NetScout report indicated AI being used in DDoS attacks as a way of bypassing Captcha tools designed to block potentially nefarious automated activity or attacks.

Mr Hummel said the "integration of AI assistants and the use of large language models (LLMs)" was proving to be a force to be reckoned with from a cybersecurity standpoint.

AI, combined with nation-state attempts to weaponise DDoS attacks and "persistent hacktivist campaigns", are creating an unprecedented risk, NetScout said.