Who Is Israel’s Elite Cyber ​​Warfare Unit 8200 Allegedly Involved In Lebanon Blasts

Although Israel has not commented on the bombings of thousands of Hezbollah members in Lebanon, the attack brought Israel’s elite 8200 unit into the spotlight.

The massive bomber attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon has put the spotlight on Israel’s elite cyberwarfare unit 8200, the intelligence unit of the Israeli Armed Forces, which a Western security source said was involved in planning the operation, according to the intelligence. reported by Reuters.

Israeli officials have remained tight-lipped about the daring intelligence operation that killed 12 people on Tuesday and wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives. At least nine people were killed on Wednesday in a new round of explosions when portable radios used by Hezbollah were detonated.

A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency was responsible for a sophisticated operation to plant small amounts of explosives in 5,000 bombers ordered by Hezbollah.

The attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon had been in preparation for at least a year

A Western security source told Reuters that Unit 8200, a non-intelligence military unit, was involved in the development stage of the operation against Hezbollah, which was more than a year in the making.

The source said Unit 8200 was involved in the technical side of testing how they could introduce explosive material into the manufacturing process.

The Israeli military declined to comment, while 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 director of research at the Israel Defense and Security Forum, said there was no confirmation that the military intelligence unit was involved in the attack.

What is unit 8200 of the Israeli army?

He said the members of the 8200 were some of the best and most skilled personnel in the Israeli military, serving in a unit at the heart of Israel’s defense capabilities.

“The challenges they face are huge, very demanding, and we need the best people to be involved in it,” he said.

The unit develops and operates intelligence-gathering tools and is often likened to the US National Security Agency.

In a rare public statement about the unit’s activities, the IDF said in 2018 that it helped prevent an Islamic State airstrike in a Western country. They also said the unit’s operations ranged from intelligence gathering and cyber defense to “technological attacks and strikes.”

Last year, its commander told a conference in Tel Aviv that the unit used artificial intelligence technology to help select Hamas targets.

Its activities are usually top secret and range from signal espionage to data acquisition and technological attacks.

Some of the operations he is alleged to have been involved in include the Stuxnet attack that disabled Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, a 2017 cyberattack on Lebanon’s state-owned telecommunications company Ogero, and thwarting an ISIS attack on a civilian airliner traveling from Australia to the United Arab Emirates in 2018.

In addition to spying on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, it operates in all areas, including combat zones, and wartime is closely integrated with combat command headquarters.

Its staff is drawn from young people in their late teens and up to 20-25 years of age, some of whom have been selected from highly competitive high school programs and many of whom have gone on to careers in Israel’s burgeoning high-tech and cyber security sector.