UAE faces 33,000 cyberattacks in 6 months

The United Arab Emirates recorded 33,165 cyberattacks in the first half of 2025, with some campaigns lasting more than three hours-the longest durations anywhere in the Middle East.

These prolonged attacks carry outsized consequences for the UAE’s role as a regional financial hub and innovation leader. Strikes lasting over 200 minutes risk downtime in banking, e-commerce, and smart city platforms, undermining the reliability on which the Emirates’ digital economy depends.

The report also found attack peaks of 434 Gbps, among the most intense in the region. Taken together, the UAE is not only a frequent target but also the testing ground for new “patience-driven” tactics, where attackers prioritize persistence over speed.

NETSCOUT released its latest research detailing the evolving Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack landscape. NETSCOUT monitored more than 8 million DDoS attacks globally in the first half of 2025, including more than 3.2 million in EMEA. DDoS attacks have evolved into precision-guided weapons of geopolitical influence capable of destabilizing critical infrastructure.

Hacktivist groups like NoName057(16) orchestrated hundreds of coordinated strikes each month, targeting the communications, transportation, energy, and defense sectors. DDoS-for-hire services have democratized attack tools, enabling novice actors to execute sophisticated attack campaigns. AI-enhanced automation, multi-vector attacks, and carpet bombing techniques challenge traditional defences. Botnets compromised tens of thousands of IoT devices, servers, and routers, delivering sustained attacks and causing significant disruption. While each of these elements is dangerous on its own, in aggregate, they have formed the perfect storm, creating unprecedented cyber risk for organizations and service provider networks around the world.

Key research findings include:

•Massive Global Attack Volume – NETSCOUT observed more than 50 attacks greater than a terabit-per-second (Tbps) and multiple gigapacket-per-second (Gpps) attacks in the first half of 2025, including a 3.12 Tbps attack in the Netherlands and a 1.5 Gpps attack in the United States.

•Geopolitical Events Triggered Unprecedented DDoS Attacks – The India-Pakistan conflict saw hacktivist groups target the Indian government and financial sectors in May, while the Iran-Israel conflict generated more than 15,000 attacks against Iran and 279 against Israel in June.