UAE became target of cyber attacks following normalisation of ties with Israel

The United Arab Emirates was the target of cyber attacks after establishing formal ties with Israel, the Gulf Arab state’s cyber security head said on Sunday.

The UAE in August broke with decades of Arab policy when it agreed to forge ties with Israel in a move that angered Palestinians and some Muslim states and communities. Bahrain and Sudan have followed suit.

“Our relationship, for example, with the normalisation with Israel really opened a whole huge attacks from some other activists against the UAE,” Mohamed Hamad al-Kuwaiti said during an onstage interview at a conference in Dubai.

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Kuwaiti said the financial sector was targeted but did not elaborate. He did not say if any of the attacks were successful or provide details on who the perpetrators were.

He also told the conference that the number of cyber attacks in the UAE increased sharply after the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Kuwaiti said traditionally many attacks in the region originate from Iran, without specifying who is behind them.

Iran has also said that it has been a victim of hacking.

The peace agreement

President Donald Trump had termed the US-brokered peace deal between Israel and the UAE as a “HUGE breakthrough”, and said that a his country's two "GREAT" friends had signed a "Historic Peace Agreement".

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A joint statement issued by the three nations said Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed had “agreed to the full normalisation of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates”.

Israel had signed peace agreements with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. But the UAE, along with most other Arab nations, did not recognise Israel and had no formal diplomatic or economic relations with it until now.

The agreement was the product of lengthy discussions between Israel, the UAE and the United States, said the White House.