Dubai eGovernment foils hacking attempts on government websites

"As part of our adherence to transparency, Dubai eGovernment is announcing that we have stopped a hacking attack by unscrupulous individuals. We have yet to ascertain the identities of the hackers and the exact location of their operation, but we have generated significant leads that will ultimately lead us to the persons behind this act. The hackers have attacked some of the Dubai eGovernment's sites on eHost, which has caused malfunction to some of the services and loss of data. We have taken immediate action by disabling the hacked sites and mobilizing our security team and technical partners, eHosting Datafort to fix the problem. We have also checked other sites and guarantee that they are safe and secure from future attacks. Within a short time, our teams were able to recover all the files that were lost and restore all programmes that were affected," said Salem Al Shair, eServices Director, Dubai eGovernment.

"There had been previous hacking tries which we also foiled because of the expertise of our team. Our primary technical investigation showed that the hackers were based in Turkey, but we are still probing further into the case because hackers are known to spoof and mask their identity and location. Our technical teams and our partner are following the source of the hacking and we'll announce the results of the investigation at an appropriate time, "he added.

"Dubai eGovernment adopts a high-security system to prevent hacking, but this doesn't mean that it is completely impregnable as there are always vulnerabilities with software and networks. This problem is not unique to us as it has happened to other high-profile organizations in other countries. One of the positives from this incident is that it has allowed Dubai eGovernment to learn more about the latest techniques and strategies used by the hackers. This way, we were able to close the gaps in our system and take the appropriate action to prevent similar incidents, "said Al Shair.

Dubai eGovernment has two Web hosts, eHost Plus and eHost. eHost Plus is highly developed and hosts the sites that are very sensitive and have high digital content. eHost is less developed and hosts sites with limited data. eHost, which was the victim of the hacking attack, uses open source programming, which makes it less secure.

"I guarantee that Dubai eGovernment sites on eHost Plus are totally secure from hackers and we are certain that the information and data on these sites are safe. Dubai eGovernment thanks its technical team and partners eHosting Datafort who have shown high responsibility and excellent response time, and we call on all our colleagues in the different departments to cooperate with us by exchanging information and work as a team to prevent such cyber-crimes. Together, we can thwart such hackers, who display negative skills that are very destructive to the community, "said Al Shair.

Hacking incidents are on the rise all over the world. According to US-CERT, in the US, there were 5,000 incidents reported in 2005, which rose to 23,000 in 2006 and there are already 19,000 incidents reported in the first quarter of 2007. The US government allocates 8% of its total IT budget (US$ 64 billion) for IT security, while the private sector in Europe allocated 9 % of their total IT budget for the same, as per a study by the UK Department of Trade and Industry. 62% of UK corporations have reported hacking incidents, while 87% of the larger corporations have reported security breaches in IT.