Ransomware Attacks on Education in the UAE
Ransomware groups have claimed 3 education organisations in the United Arab Emirates since 2020, which is 2.7% of all attributed UAE claims. Blacknevas accounts for 1 of them. The earliest claim in this sector was recorded on and the most recent on .
Data as of , drawn from 192 leak-site claims collected by ransomware.live. How this data is collected and filtered.
Which groups claim UAE education organisations
All groups| Name | Relative volume | Incidents | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blacknevas | 1 | 33.3% | |
| BQTLock | 1 | 33.3% | |
| NightSpire | 1 | 33.3% | |
| Total | 3 | 100% |
How Education claims spread across periods
Education holds 3 claimed UAE organisations from 3 separate groups, with the most recent recorded in October 2026.
Education ranks twelfth among UAE sectors with 3 claimed organisations
Education sits twelfth of 13 UAE sectors and carries 2.7% of all attributed claims. The count runs far below the average of 8.6 claims per active sector. Three data points describe no pattern, and this page exists so the sector breakdown stays complete.
The Education record spans twelve months
Leak-site monitoring recorded the first Education claim against a UAE organisation on 11 October 2025. The most recent was recorded on 15 October 2026. The sector shows 1 claim in 2025 and 2 in the partial year 2026.
Three distinct groups account for the 3 claims, one each. No operation has returned to the sector.
Education recorded nothing at all across 2020 to 2024. On this tracker the sector is recent rather than persistent, and its whole record fits inside twelve months.
What this means for UAE organisations
- Read the count as an absence of evidence rather than as evidence of safety, because 3 claims cannot describe a sector.
- Note that the record doubled between 2025 and the partial year 2026, which is the only movement visible here.
- Map your obligations under the UAE Personal Data Protection Law, which reaches student records and staff records equally.
- Treat research partnerships and shared systems as part of the estate, since an institution rarely controls every system its people use.
- Compare against Healthcare, which holds 6 claims and shows how quickly a small sector count can move.
A sector with 3 claims from 3 groups gives nothing to model. The useful signal would be a second claim by the same group, and this record does not contain one.
