Group-IB launches Arabic threat intelligence series
Group-IB has launched Masked Actors: BelArabi, the first Arabic-language edition of its global Masked Actors podcast.
The series is an original Arabic-language production rather than a translation of the English edition. It is designed for Arabic-speaking audiences across the region and focuses on threat actors, their motivations and behavior, and emerging cyber threats across the Middle East, Türkiye and Africa.
According to Group-IB’s High-Tech Crime Trends 2026 report, as digital ecosystems expand rapidly across the Middle East and Africa, the cyber threat landscape is becoming more complex and nuanced, with tracked phishing activity disproportionately targeting high-impact sectors like internet services (52.49%) and financial institutions (28.50%). With these evolving challenges and attacks impacting communities and organizations in the region, building broad digital risk awareness is more critical than ever.
Across the season, the series will examine the different forces shaping cybercrime in the region, including state-linked activity, the cybercriminal economy, and hacktivism, helping bridge this gap by breaking down how threat actors operate into simple, accessible language for diverse regional audiences. It will explore the boundaries between state, criminal, and hacktivist activity as they are becoming increasingly blurred, making an understanding of adversaries’ motivations, behavior, and infrastructure critical to effective cyber defense.
MuddyWater opens the series
The first episode examines MuddyWater, a state-linked threat actor that Group-IB has tracked since 2017. It also covers recent threat activity targeting organizations across the META region.
The episode highlights Operation Olalampo, a campaign targeting more than 100 organizations across META. The operation introduced four new malware families and showed signs of AI-assisted development.
Group-IB says the research reflects its Prediction-First approach, which tracks malicious activity while it is still unfolding and gives organizations earlier visibility into emerging threats.
Masked Actors: BelArabi brings Group-IB’s threat intelligence and cyber investigations to Arabic-speaking audiences.
“Cybersecurity conversations in this region are often borrowed from elsewhere. With Masked Actors: BelArabi, we wanted to start with our region’s own realities and make the intelligence behind them accessible in Arabic,” said Mohammad Gamal, Cyber Investigation Specialist at Group-IB. “It is not simply about explaining how an attack works. We want listeners to understand who may be behind it, what motivates them, and why that context matters to organizations operating here.”
“Understanding why an attack happens is as important as understanding how,” said Mansour Alhmoud, Cyber Intelligence Analyst at Group-IB. “When we understand an adversary’s motivations, behavior, and infrastructure, we have more context to recognize emerging activity earlier. Our research into MuddyWater demonstrates why this matters: intelligence is most valuable when it gives defenders time to act while an operation is still unfolding, rather than simply explaining what happened afterward.”
Group-IB operates Digital Crime Resistance Centers in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where locally based experts investigate and analyze threats affecting organizations across the region.
The launch comes ahead of Cybersecurity Awareness Month in October, reinforcing Group-IB’s commitment to making cybersecurity knowledge and threat intelligence more accessible to organizations and individuals across the region.
Masked Actors: BelArabi is available on Group-IB’s podcast page, YouTube channel, Spotify, and other major streaming platforms.
