What is Unit 8200 of Israel? Hezbollah Pager Attacks are Connected to A Covert Cyberwarfare Unit
What is Unit 8200 of Israel? Hezbollah Pager Attacks are Connected to A Covert Cyberwarfare Unit
The majority of Unit 8200’s workforce consists of young adults in their late teens and early 20s who were selected from extremely difficult academic programs. Many of these individuals go on to work in high-tech industries like cyber security.
On Tuesday, September 17, the world was shocked to learn that over a thousand Hezbollah terrorists had suffered severe injuries when their pager sets simultaneously exploded. On September 18, the next day, a number of walkie-talkies were set off by an explosion.
Approximately 3,250 people were injured and at least 32 people died in the spate of widespread, unexplained explosions that occurred in Lebanon. In the modern period of warfare, this is one of the largest and most likely stunning technological attack forms.
The incident has generated a great deal of curiosity among the general public, who want to know how it was planned, how pagers were “hacked,” and how Israel was able to launch such a lethal attack from a distance. While Israel has remained silent on the pager attack in Lebanon, attention has been drawn to force Unit 8200 of the Israel Defence Forces, a covert cyber warfare force.
Read More: Unit 8200: An Overview of Israel’s Elite Intelligence Unit
Several accounts state that Unit 8200 was integral to the intelligence operation’s development phase, which lasted more than a year, according to sources. According to the claims, the unit was in charge of experimenting with the insertion of explosive material throughout the manufacturing process.
Unit 8200 in the Spotlight: IDF’s Secretive Intelligence Cyber Warfare Arm
The IDF maintains a separate Military Intelligence Directorate for exploiting signals to conduct covert operations. Having been created as soon as the state of Israel was established in 1948, this is one of the IDF’s oldest directorates.
The 8200 Unit, 9900 Unit, and 504 Unit are the three primary arms that comprise this specific directorate. The largest of which, according to the IDF’s official website, is the 8200 Unit, the principal information-gathering unit of the Military Intelligence Directorate.
The 8200 Unit’s soldiers are in charge of creating and using instruments for acquiring information, as well as processing, analyzing, and distributing it to the appropriate authorities.
According to the IDF website, the unit works in all zones, and during the conflict, they collaborate with combat field headquarters to expedite the exchange of information.
Its operations, which typically involve extreme secrecy, cover anything from data mining and signal intelligence to technological assaults and strikes.
Previous Attacks by Unit 8200
The Stuxnet virus attack in 2005–10, which stopped Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, the 2017 cyberattack on Ogero, the state telecom provider in Lebanon, and the 2018 ISIS attack on a civilian airliner flying from Australia to the United Arab Emirates are just a few of the purportedly prior operations carried out by the IDF’s Unit 8200.
Its commanding commander said at a Tel Aviv conference last year that the unit had assisted in the selection of Hamas targets by using artificial intelligence technologies.
Additionally, the team spies on Palestinians during times of war and in the West Bank and Gaza, especially in fighting zones.
Recruiting Young Talented Minds
The majority of Unit 8200’s staff members are young adults in their late teens and early 20s who were selected from extremely difficult academic programs. Many of them work in the high-tech and cyber security industries.
According to former members, the atmosphere of the unit is meant to encourage creativity and is akin to that of a startup, with small teams working on problems with an exceptional amount of flexibility.
It should be mentioned that the unit commander announced his resignation this month due to the negative impact the unit’s reputation suffered due to the IDF and the unit’s inability to stop the October 7 attack on Israel.
About The Author:
Yogesh Naager is a content marketer who specializes in the cybersecurity and B2B space. Besides writing for the News4Hackers blogs, he also writes for brands including Craw Security, Bytecode Security, and NASSCOM.
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