‘Hackers attack Saudi govt. websites’

Anonymous hackers have reportedly attacked several government websites in Saudi Arabia, bringing down some of them for hours.

State news agency SPA quoted an official at Saudi Interior Ministry as saying that the “coordinated and simultaneous attacks” on hundreds of Internet protocol addresses have been traced from a number of countries.

The Interior Ministry website was brought down for about two hours on Wednesday after being targeted in one of the cyber strikes, the report said.

The Saudi Ministry of Finance, General Intelligence Presidency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Directorate General of Passports, as well as sites for several major Saudi provinces also were sabotaged in the heavy cyber attacks from abroad in recent days.

Last year, national oil company Saudi Aramco – the world’s biggest oil company – was the target of a cyber strike during which some 30,000 computers were damaged by a computer virus known as Shamoon.