Western media trace the Lebanon pager attacks to Israel’s secretive 8200 cyber warfare unit and planning took 15 years
Israeli intelligence services have been contemplating an operation along the lines of the mass explosions of Hezbollah electronic devices for at least 15 years, a US intelligence source told ABC News recently.
The covert operation caused thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon to explode almost simultaneously, killing 50 and wounding 3,000 others. The attack has shone a torch on Israel’s secretive 8200 cyber warfare unit according to Reuters.
The Israel Defence Forces’ specialist cyber warfare and intelligence unit, is known in Israel by its numbers in Hebrew “shmone matayim,” (Unit eight two-hundred) which is part of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate.
This video grab, shows a walkie-talkie that was exploded inside a house, in Baalbek, east Lebanon, September 18, 2024. © AP Photo
Unit 8200 is the equivalent of the US National Security Agency or Britain’s GCHQ, and is the largest single military unit in the Israel Defence Forces. It is descended from early codebreaking and intelligence units formed at the birth of the state of Israel in 1948. Its activities are usually highly secret and range from signals intelligence to data mining and technological attacks and strikes.
Some of the operations it has allegedly been involved in include the 2005-10 Stuxnet virus attack that disabled Iranian nuclear centrifuges, a 2017 cyberattack 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 has used artificial intelligence technology to help select Hamas targets. As well as spying on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, it operates in all areas, including combat zones, and in wartime is integrated closely with combat command headquarters.
Unit 8200
Its personnel are selected from young people in their late teens and early 20s, some identified from highly competitive high school programmes, and many of whom have gone on to careers in Israel’s booming high tech and cyber security 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. Along with the rest of the defence and security establishment, the unit’s reputation took a hit over the military’s failure to forestall the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the unit’s commander announced this month he would be resigning.
Insignia of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate
In 2014, a group of 43 reservists published an open letter denouncing “unethical” surveillance by the unit of Palestinians not involved in violence.
Speaking to ABC News, a US source said the unit directed a select group of Mossad agents who did a “supply chain interdiction,” of electronic devices destined for Lebanon, Syria and Iran on their behalf.
The source added that the CIA has long been reluctant to employ similar tactics due to the risk of collateral damage. In Lebanon, children were among the dozens of people killed in the attack, which also left many victims mutilated.
The New York Times previously reported that the supply of sabotaged devices started in the summer of 2023, citing multiple officials familiar with the operation. The ABC News report suggests that BAC Consulting, a Hungarian-based firm subcontracted by Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Gold Apollo to produce pagers for Hezbollah, is an Israeli front.
Both Hungary and Taiwan have denied any knowledge whatsoever of the pagers. “The devices were never in Hungary and BAC was a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site” A Hungarian spokesperson said while Taiwanese Economy Minister Kuo Jyh-huei told reporters. “The components are [mainly] low-end IC [integrated circuits] and batteries, I can say with certainty they were not made in Taiwan.”
An unnamed Lebanese official familiar with the investigation told CNN on Friday, that the explosives in the pagers were hidden inside the device in a way “so sophisticated that it could not be detected.”
Another official told the network that the materials were “laced” into the pager’s lithium battery and were virtually undetectable, adding that he had “never seen anything like it.”
Lebanese officials also tested controlled explosions of the pagers and observed how devastating they must have been to their owners, according to the network.
Sean Moorehouse, an explosive ordinance disposal expert, told CNN that a pager could be weaponized by adding a detonator and an explosive. He added that near-total undetectability could have been achieved by placing the detonator and explosive material in a metal case impenetrable to imaging technology. The network noted that European authorities are investigating both BAC Consulting and Norta Global Ltd, a Bulgarian-based company, for involvement in the sale of the pagers to Hezbollah.
Lebanese officials have stopped short of blaming any particular companies, saying the pagers “were tampered with from foreign entities before being delivered to Lebanon and modified to send electronic signals that led these devices to be exploded.”
An electronic signal sent from Unit 8200.
Source X/RT/CNN/Reuters/AP