Hezbollah pager attack highlights Israeli Unit 8.200's cyberwarfare

A Western security source told Reuters that Unit 8200, a military section that is not part of Mossad, was involved in the development phase of the operation that lasted more than a year.

El Massive beeper attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon has put the spotlight on the secret Unit 8.200 Israeli, the intelligence entity of the Israel Defense Forces that, according to a Western security source, was involved in planning the operation.

Israeli authorities have remained silent on the bold intelligence operation which killed 12 people and wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives on Tuesday. At least one person was killed on Wednesday when portable radios used by Hezbollah detonated.

A senior Lebanese security source and another source told the news agency Reuters that the Israeli spy agency Mossad was responsible for a sophisticated operation to place a small amount of explosives inside 5.000 pagers ordered by Hezbollah.

A Western security source told Reuters that Unit 8200, a military section that is not part of the spy agency, was involved in the development stage of the operation against Hezbollah, which lasted more than a year.

The source said Unit 8200 was involved in the technical aspect of the tests of how they could insert explosive material into the manufacturing process.

The Israeli military declined to comment. The prime minister's office, which oversees the Mossad, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Yossi Kuperwasser, a former military intelligence official and now research director at the Israel Defense and Security Forum, said there was no confirmation that the military intelligence unit was involved in the attack.

But he claimed the 8.200 members were Some of the best and brightest members of the Israeli military, who served in a department at the center of Israel's defense capabilities.

"The challenges they face are immense, very demanding and we need the best people involved in that," he said.

The unit - and its legion of hand-picked young soldiers - develops and operates intelligence-gathering tools and is often compared to the US National Security Agency.

In a rare public statement about the unit's activities, the IDF said in 2018 that it had helped thwart an Islamic State airstrike against a Western country. At the time, they said the unit's operations ranged from intelligence gathering and cyber defense to “attacks and technological attacks.”

Although Israel has never confirmed its involvement, Unit 8.200 was reportedly involved in the Stuxnet attack which disabled Iranian nuclear centrifuges, as well as a number of other high-profile operations outside Israel.

The unit is effectively Israel's early warning system and, like much of the rest of the defense and security establishment, took part of the blame for failing to detect the Hamas attack from October 7 to southern Israel.

Its commander announced last week that he would resign. In his resignation letter, which was published by Israeli media, he said he had not fulfilled his mission.

The unit is renowned for a work culture that emphasizes innovative thinking to tackle problems that had not been previously raised or imagined. This helped some graduates build Israel's high-tech sector and some of its largest companies.

“Whether it’s a problem with software weakness, math, encryption, a problem hacking something… you have to be able to do it on your own,” he said. Avi Shua, an 8.200 graduate, who later co-founded Orca Security, a cloud security unicorn.

The unit has a high turnover rate of young recruits replacing veterans, said Kobi Samboursky, another former member of 8.200 and managing partner of Glilot Capital Partners, an early-stage fund that invests in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

"The most important thing here is the 'can do' culture, where everything is possible," Samboursky said.

(With information from Reuters)
Source: INFOBAE