The Turkish government is acting harshly against the opposition’s online activity. Now a new Turkish search engine could help the government monitor its citizens online Following the July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, the Turkish regime has acted to systematically suppress all activities of opposition in the country. It has done so by making multiple […]
On November 4, 2017, it was published that Iran had placed a balloon above the Mehran border crossing with Iraq, as part of a project described as unprecedented, intended to provide free Wi-Fi connection to Shiite pilgrims arriving every year at the Holy Shrine of Shiite Imam Hussein bin Ali in Karbala, Iraq for the […]
On September 26, 2017, it was published that Iran had filed charges against the CEO and founder of the Telegram app, Pavel Durov, due to this application being used as a popular means of communications among operatives and supporters of the Islamic State as well as among criminal elements. The company’s CEO Pavel Durov said […]
On October 23, 2017, the Iranian CERT published a warning against a ransomware called Tyrant attacking Iranian computers running Microsoft Windows. According to the announcement, the malware was hidden as Psiphon, a VPN software which is very popular in Iran. After opening it, users were presented with a Persian-language message that their computer had […]
On October 19, 2017, a new cabinet was appointed in the United Arab Emirates, numbering 31 ministers. This was announced on the Twitter account of the Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. It was also announced (in English and Arabic) that the 27-year-old Omar Bin […]
On October 10, 2017, it was published that Egyptian Interior Ministry had ordered to close four pages on social media (whose details were not disclosed) since these pages were administered by individuals who had used them to circulate posts inciting violence against state institutions and citizens The Egyptian parliament is scheduled to discuss a cyber […]
According to a report from October 2, 2017, Oman’s National Cyber Security CTF (Capture the Flag) Competition has been launched. The competition is held by the Information Systems Department at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU). The orientation sessions were held in various colleges and universities in Oman on September 25-28, 2017. The online event will take […]
On September 25, 2017, it was published that the mufti of the Houthi militia in Yemen, Shams al-Deen Sharad al-Deen, issued a fatwa (religious ruling) forbidding the use of Internet as “it leads to corruption.” Houthi forces enforced the fatwa in the village of Qabal, located in Hamdan district of Sanaa governorate. According to locals, […]
On October 12, 2017, it was published that access to the local French-language news website Tous sur l’Algérie (TSA) had been blocked in Algeria by the state-owned telecom companies as of October 5, 2017. The Internet companies did not provide any official explanation for blocking the site. In an interview for Radio Chaîne 3, Algerian […]
On September 22, 2017, Turkish and international media reported that the winner of Miss Turkey 2017, Itir Esen, was stripped of her crown just a few hours after winning the beauty pageant, due to a tweet she posted around the anniversary of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt, in which she sympathized with the martyrs. […]
According to reports from August 31, 2017, the WikiLeaks website has been defaced by a Saudi hacker group named OurMine. The attack was apparently carried out by DNS poisoning, not directly on the website servers, which actually were not hacked, but on DNS servers which are responsible for routing users’ requests asking for wikileaks.org, changing […]
In late June 2016, Qatar’s telecommunication company Ooredoo announced the signing of two agreements. The first was signed with the Qatar Chamber, for cooperation to better represent Qatar’s business community and support its national Vision 2030. As part of this agreement, the company will provide telecommunications services and innovative apps to support the Chamber activities […]
On August 28, 2017, it was published that a report sent by cyber security company Symantec Corp. to its clients in July reveals that it identified an ongoing cyber espionage campaign since October 2016, most probably a state-sponsored one – although the name of the country was not disclosed– against several entities in India and […]
On August 7, 2017, it was reported that police in the city of Nikopol, Ukraine, had arrested a man suspected of spreading the malware Petya.A which attacked various countries, mainly Ukraine. On August 16, 2017, Maersk, a transport and logistics company which was among the companies hit by that attack, reported that due to the […]
Terror and internet, on the surface those are two different worlds of content: Terror is the implication of violence, or threatening to implement it, against civilians in the name of achieving political aims. First and foremost, granted the civilians are considered the “underbelly” of society and means of heightened pressure on the government so they […]
On July 5, it was published that an Interpol spokesperson has denied reports appearing on the Turkish Internet that the organization has blocked Turkish access to the organizational database due to the revolutionary attempts in Turkey in the second half of July, 2016, when the authorities tried to upload a wanted list containing 50,000 movement […]
On May 15th it was reported that the Ministry of Interior in Saudi Arabia Mecca province inaugurated a security control center, which is the largest and most modern in the Middle East, called the “National Center for Joint Security Operations.” The center monitors 18 thousand security cameras, among other, through two giant screens which are […]
According to a report from June 12, 2017, Google launched an application called Qibla Finder, intended to help people find the direction of prayer in Islam towards the city of Mecca, based on Augmented Reality. After the users give permission to the application to trace their location, it can direct them by displaying a blue […]