Cybercrime and Cybersecurity in the Middle East and North African Economies

Abstract

There has been a rapid escalation and intensification of cybercrime activities originating in as well as targeting the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Such activities are economically and financially as well as politically and ideologically motivated. During 2011 and 2012, for instance, an email account of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, was hacked, networks of the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Arab Bank on the Gaza Strip were attacked and credit card information of thousands of Saudi citizens were compromised (Enzer, 2012). According to a member of the Shoura Council and Deputy Chairman of the Transportation, Telecommunications and Information Technology Committee, Saudi Arabian banks lost US$1 billion to various forms of cybercrimes during 2010–2011 (Al-Hakim, 2012). Likewise, during the one-year period between mid-2009 and mid-2010, over 2 million computers were attacked in Turkey and 476 million spam emails were sent from the country (Hürriyet Daily News, 2010).