JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Although Israel has not commented on the intelligence operation that caused thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon to explode almost simultaneously, the attack has put a spotlight on Israel’s secretive 8200 cyber warfare unit.
Here are some facts about the Israel Defence Forces’ specialist cyber warfare and intelligence unit, known in Israel by its numbers in Hebrew “shmone matayim,” which is part of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate.
– Unit 8200 is the equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency or Britain’s GCHQ, and is the largest single military unit in the Israel Defence Forces. It is descended from early codebreaking and intelligence units formed at the birth of the state of Israel in 1948.
– Its activities are usually highly secret and range from signals intelligence to data mining and technological attacks and strikes.
– Some of the operations it has allegedly been involved in include the 2005-10 Stuxnet virus attack that disabled Iranian nuclear centrifuges, a 2017 cyberattack on Lebanon’s state telecoms company Ogero, and the thwarting of an ISIS attack on a civilian airliner travelling from Australia to the United Arab Emirates in 2018.
– Last year, its commanding officer told a conference in Tel Aviv that the unit has used artificial intelligence technology to help select Hamas targets.
– As well as spying on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, it operates in all areas, including combat zones, and in wartime is integrated closely with combat command headquarters.
– Its personnel are selected from young people in their late teens and early 20s, some identified from highly competitive high school programmes, and many of whom have gone on to careers in Israel’s booming high tech and cyber security sector.
– Former members say the unit’s culture resembles that of a startup with small teams working on problems with an unusual degree of freedom that is designed to foster creativity.
– Along with the rest of the defence and security establishment, the unit’s reputation took a hit over the military’s failure to forestall the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the unit’s commander announced this month he would be resigning.
– In 2014, a group of 43 reservists published an open letter denouncing “unethical” surveillance by the unit of Palestinians not involved in violence.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
