UAE foiled 72 attacks on bank accounts

The UAE’s top telecommunications body foiled 72 electronic attacks on bank accounts last year targeting their holders and passwords with the aim of stealing the funds, an official was quoted on Wednesday as saying.

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said it aborted the penetration attempts with the help of the Central Bank, adding that it is holding regular meetings with banks and the Central Bank to upgrade security of accounts and prevent fresh penetrations.

“We discovered 72 penetration operations on bank accounts last year and succeeded in aborting them in coordination with the country’s banking institutions,” said Tariq Al Hawi, director of the computer emergency response at TRA, which supervises the telecom sector in the second largest Arab economy.

“We referred 15 of these crimes to a special laboratory to analyze them and foil such attempts in future….most of the electronic attacks that took place last year targeted the account holder and password to break the accounts secrecy.”

Quoted by the Arabic language daily Emirat Alyoum, he said one government department and one private sector establishment were also penetrated.

“There are instructions from the Central Bank for banks to fully cooperate with us to confront such attacks…the Central Bank itself is also in the process of developing its resources and mechanisms to deal with banks in order to strengthen their capabilities to face such penetrations.”

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