From the war against the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah three years ago, to the recent reports of a plan to recruit "Internet warfare" team, Israel has been seemingly attached growing importance to cyber-tactics in its warfare.
Reports from Jerusalem suggest the country's Foreign Ministry has unveiled plans for an "Internet warfare" team. The program recruits members from the public to write on websites in defense of Israel.
The successful candidates need to be students of law or politics who speak foreign languages. Others will have a military background. Much of what they will do is to write talkbacks on news sites -- the area usually beneath a news story that allows for public comments.
Back to 2006, the Israeli war with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah could form the basis of a cyber-warfare ABC textbook. Israel adopted a series of low-key methods for trying to win the war physically and psychologically.
Israel created numerous fake sites in Arabic that spoke to average Lebanese citizens. It tried offering rewards for the hand- over of Hezbollah fighters and, in perhaps the most James Bond- like operations, it took control of people's mobile phones.
In September 2007, Israeli jets blew up a remote facility in Syria, which was believed to be a nuclear facility under construction. From what journalists have been able to learn of that operation, Israel managed to jam Syrian radar and other devices to allow its air force time to launch the strike undetected.
Israel is not alone in doing this -- experts say Iran, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and many more are also developing techniques that use modern technologies to infiltrate the enemy.
"Everybody in the region is doing it," said Mike Dahan, a political science expert in the Communications Department of Sapir College in Israel's Negev Desert.
In the Middle East, spies, intelligence agencies and sundry official eavesdroppers are increasingly using the Internet and beyond to target enemy states. It is rumored that several countries in the Middle East use Russian hackers and scientists to operate on their behalf.
However, it is Israel that is seemingly at the cutting edge -- listed alongside the United States, France and a couple of others as a top cyber-war nation.
Israel's high-tech industry is a world leader, particularly in the fields of security and communications. Israeli companies such as Comverse, Checkpoint and AMDOCS are world leaders, while many other top international high-tech firms choose to locate their research and development arms in Israel.
All that Israeli technical know-how comes from one place: the army. There is one unit within the army's intelligence arm that seems to specialize in producing the most talented CEOs and programming whiz kids. And it is the army that takes the lead in Israel's cyber campaigns.
The other intelligence branches, including the famed Mossad, are very dependent on the military, although it is understood that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) is now developing its own mechanism.
The Shin Bet has a similar mandate to the FBI, with its main focuses being the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.
Gadi Evron, a private consultant formerly responsible for security in Israeli government's non-military computer system, does not deny that his country has a large-scale activity using the Internet to disrupt enemy activities. He just tends to err when it comes to talk of the more grandiose plots.
While it is clear Israel has successfully used cyber-tactics against its enemies, it is harder to know to what extent Israel has been hit, according to Dahan.
"If you are attacked or hacked and no one knows about it, you are not going to run to the press and tell people," he said.
Israel talks little about its cyber operations, but occasional leaks to the media, along with insider knowledge amassed by analysts, certainly pointing to a trend of active involvement of computer experts in Israel's covert and sometimes overt operations.
Part of the problem in discussing "cyber warfare" is the terminology, according to Evron.
"Information warfare or cyber warfare is the most widely used buzzword right now. It's something that people listen to, so experts go out there and have a lot of fun using the term, trying to get into the press," said Evron.
Hacking into websites and flooding computer systems are commonplace these days, the question is to what extent governments participate in these types of activities and the more sinister planting of Trojan Horses on enemy computers in order to gain control of information and to potentially disinform.
The truth is these are unknown quantities and governments are spending huge sums both trying to protect themselves from these attacks and trying to learn how they can be used to their own advantage.
(Xinhua News Agency July 15, 2009)
