A few days ago a very interesting episode of the Darknet Diaries podcast was released discussing the “service disruption” that Gulf Bank had back in 2019 in which they supposedly lost $9 million. Back then, a local cyber security consultant, Mohammed Aldoub (@Voulnet) discovered evidence that led him o speculate that Gulf Bank might have been hacked similarly to how some other banks around the world at the time that were getting hacked through the SWIFT system. Gulf Bank denied they had been hacked and although Mohammed never mentioned Gulf Bank in his tweets, they ended up suing him and taking him to court. Mohammed eventually won the case last year but only after it cost him a lot of money and time.
The podcast episode is fairly short at around 30 minutes and is pretty interesting. I listened to it on Spotify but you could also listen to it on the Darknet Diaries website. The interview starts 5 minutes into the podcast.
If you found this story interesting, the cyber security website Cyberscoop published an article on the subject last year titled “Trial & Error in Kuwait“. The article has a bit more details and is also fascinating to read so check it out.
3 replies on “Darknet Diaries: Gulf Bank vs Voulnet”
There have been several hacking incidents in Kuwait. The public is only made aware it at a later point in time. Fortunately, things have been going well and the customers so far have not been affected, at least, not in a big way. I know incidents of local airlines being hacked where they were in the dark. Some were in the newspaper. God has indeed taken care of us.
:O I listen to Darknet Diaries occasionally but haven’t listened to recent episodes, pretty cool.
Very interesting. Esp. the link to the WSJ story.