What is Israel's Unit 8200? Secretive cyber warfare arm linked to Hezbollah pager attacks

The entire world wasleft in shock on Tuesday (Sep 17), when more than 1,000 Hezbollah militants were seriously injured after their pager sets exploded, all simultaneously. The pagersblast was then followed by blowing off several walkie-talkies the next day on September 18.

In the series of mass mysterious blasts in Lebanon, at least 32 people were killed and around 3,250 suffered injuries. This is one of the biggest and probably the most shocking forms of attack using technology in the modern era of warfare.

There is a lot of curiosity among commoners about the incident- how it was carried out, how pagers were “hacked,” and how Israel was able to carry out such a deadly attack by sitting miles away. Although Israel has not commented on the Lebanon pager attack, the spotlight is shifted to Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) Unit 8200, which is a secretive cyber warfare unit.

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As per several reports, Unit 8200 played a crucial role in the development stage of the intelligence operation, which was, according to sources, going on for over a year. The reports suggest that the unit was responsible for testing how to insert explosive material within the manufacturing process.

Unit 8200 in spotlight: IDF’s secretive intelligence cyber warfare arm

The IDF has a dedicated Military Intelligence Directorate for carrying out clandestine operations using signals. This is one of the oldest directorates of IDF, established as soon as the state of Israel was founded in 1948.

This particular directorate is made up of its three main arms- the 8200 Unit, the 9900 Unit and the 504 Unit. The biggest of which is the 8200 Unit, which is the Military Intelligence Directorate's main information-gathering unit, as per IDF’s official website.

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Soldiers in the 8200 Unit are in charge of developing and utilising information-gathering tools, analysing, processing and sharing the gathered info with relevant officials.

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“The unit operates in all zones and in wartime, they join combat field headquarters in order to enable a faster flow of information,” the IDF website read.

Its activities are usually highly secret and range from signalintelligence to data mining and technological attacks and strikes.

Previous attacks by Unit 8200

Some of the alleged previous operations carried out by the IDF’s Unit 8200 include the 2005-10 Stuxnet virus attack that disabled Iranian nuclear centrifuges, then a recent 2017 cyber attack on Lebanon’s state telecoms company Ogero, and the thwarting of an ISIS attack on a civilian airliner travelling from Australia to the United Arab Emirates in 2018.

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

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The unit also spies on Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, including combat zones, and in wartime.

Recruiting young talented minds

Unit 8200’s personnel are mostly young people in their late teens and early 20s, identified from highly competitive school programs, and many of whom havecareers in cyber security andhigh-tech sector.

Former members say the unit's culture resembles that of a startup with small teams working on problems with an unusual degree of freedom that is designed to foster creativity.

It is to be noted that the unit's reputation took a hit over the IDF and the unit’s failure to forestall the October 7 attack on Israel after which the unitcommander announced his resignation this month.

(With inputs from agencies)