The Ministry of Interior has asked Interpol to help pursue hackers attacking government websites, said a ministry official.
Director general of the National Center for Electronic Security (NCES) at the ministry, Saleh Al-Mutairi, said that cyber attacks have been launched on the websites of the ministries of interior, foreign affairs, labor and finance.
Al-Mutairi was speaking to the media on the opening day of the First National Seminar on Electronic Security in Riyadh on Monday. “We will investigate the latest security breaches, track down the perpetrators and prevent them from launching further attacks.”
He said the NCES would cooperate with Interpol in the investigations.
He said it was difficult to provide the precise number of cyber violations against the Kingdom because of the absence of a national umbrella organization dealing with these issues. He said the NCES would work with the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) to protect infrastructure in the Kingdom and cooperate with all sensitive establishments in government and the private sector.
Programs director at the NCES, Abdul Rahman Al-Moaiqil, who was also at the press conference, said there have been no cases of spying on government apparatuses. He said there have been a small number of attacks, but it was important to discover and remove misleading information inside networks.
Al-Moaiqil said the NCES was studying a proposal to set up a national commission for information security.
“Some of the attacks are highly complex and involve planting a spying system in a network unobserved by the owner of the network.”
Serious hacking operations have been detected in the United States and Europe, he said.
He said electronic security centers have only emerged recently. “About 50 percent of the security centers in the world are in the US and Europe and not more than two years old. Furthermore, there is no universal standard of specifications in the field.”
Al-Moaiqil said it was important to draw up basic regulations to identify suspicious data in a network, deal with it, and warn concerned parties.
He said Saudi Arabia may play a more significant role in information security in the future. The NCES plans to organize an international conference on cyber crimes and related issues in Riyadh in November.
Interior Ministry seeks Interpol help against attacks by hackers
