While Israel has yet to comment on the covert operation to simultaneously detonate thousands of doorbells, it appears that the elite secret cyber warfare unit, codenamed “8200,” played a central role in the attack.
Belongs to the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate (see more of “N”‘s recent article here) and in summary, his identity and deeds are as follows
– The “8200” unit is equivalent to the US National Security Agency or the UK’s GCHQ. It is the largest military unit of the Israel Defense Forces. Since 1948, its name has been used by the first secret service groups created in Israel at the birth of the state.
– Their activities are generally covered by extreme secrecy and vary from listening of encoded information until data “mining”, attacks and technological strikes.
Some of the impressive operations allegedly carried out by the 8200 group include:
- The creation and propagation of the Stuxnet malicious virus (software) with which a large part of the Iranian nuclear program was disabled in 2005
- A 2017 cyberattack on Lebanon’s state-owned telecommunications company, Ogero
- Preventing an ISIS attack on a civilian airliner traveling from Australia to the United Arab Emirates in 2018.
– Last year, its commander told a conference in Tel Aviv that the unit used technology artificial intelligence to help select Hamas targets.
– Your team is made up of young people: from their late teens to 24, 25 years old at the most. Some of these young people come from highly competitive programs that run in Israeli high schools. Many later pursue careers in Israel’s growing high-tech and cybersecurity sector.
– Former 8200 members say the unit’s culture is similar to that of a start-up company: Many small subgroups working on specific problems with a large degree of freedom, designed to encourage creativity.
– Like most military and intelligence services in defense and security, the unit’s reputation was affected due to its failure to prevent an attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel on October 7, and the unit’s commander announced earlier this month that he would resign.
