New research raises concerns that moderation tools can't detect violent threats in Tigray and elsewhere. After his initial assessment, K. was offered a chance to enter Unit 8200, an elite intelligence unit in the IDF. Most infamously, according to a 2018 lawsuit, the Saudi government is alleged to have used Pegasus to hack the phone of a friend of Jamal Khashoggis in order to monitor the journalist before his murder. The experience sparked my interest in both military intelligence and my current career as a security researcher. startups Unit 8200: The only way to succeed in high-tech? Screenshot from YouTube. This requires world-class hacking and artificial intelligence tools as warfare moves from conventional battlefields land, sea and air to include cyber terrain. The company is at the cutting edge of cyber defence, with predictive software designed to anticipate hacking threats that do not exist yet. Israeli journalists often get their start at the IDFs popular radio station, Galatz. In Israel, just 26% of the tech positions are held by women. K.s family belongs to Israels old-school elite, made up of the children and grandchildren of the countrys founding generation. Alongside countries such as Iran which itself has formidable cyber capability various non-state hackers also have Israel in their sights. This was my way to give back to society and defend my country, he says. Inside the laboratory the cell phone exploded. The unit was established at the establishment of the state and took part in all of Israel's wars. Behind NSO Group, there are many more. Another said that soldiers would call one another over to listen when one of their targets was discussing a funny medical condition such as haemorrhoids. DarkMatter is also known for, according to Yedioth Ahronoth, recruiting 8200 graduates by offering massive $100,000-a-month contracts and foofy beachfront rentals on beautiful Cyprus beaches. It shows you how power can corrupt.. Old school things, he says. I asked Maimon about the refuseniks and last years protest letter. Team 8, a self-described cyber security foundry aimed at providing know-how for start-ups, was launched by former 8200 officers in Tel Aviv earlier this year, attracting Googles Eric Schmidt as an investor. It handles open-source intelligence, threat assessment, cryptanalysis, and cyberwarfare. But theres one thing I believe: people have to be safe. This approach has helped Unit 8200 have an equal number of female and male soldiers. One intelligence source might have identified somebody talking in a car on a phone while another, using a camera on a plane, identifies the same car. K. himself now works in the Israeli tech industry as a data analyst. Then you need to make a living. Mack, then, does all his work based on information acquired from activists and open sources. He started dreaming bigger. Its rarely the case in the army, he says, that something happens that is so immoral that you go out of the room and say, I cannot participate. You dont really see it in its entirety. It was clear that, for someone like me, there are routes in life, K. says. And it shows how far it goes. Military publications include references to Unit 8200 as the Central Collection Unit of the Intelligence Corps, and it is sometimes referred to as Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU). By piecing together a few social media posts, the talk show had figured out that NSO Group had recently flown hundreds of its employees out for a secret company retreat at a luxury resort in Thailand. The experience, the connections. It wasnt always the plan to build a career on the back of his 8200 experience. The Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) Unit 8200 is infamous for surveilling the indigenous Palestinian population, amassing kompromat on individuals for the purposes of blackmail and extortion.. Apprentice programs registered with the Department of Labor must meet standards established by the Commissioner. Recruits who pass these tests undergo extensive training that teaches them any technical information they need to know. He holds hunger strikes in protests of sales. And everything is pragmatic. Technical skills aren't a requirement; the unit values traits that indicate leadership and problem-solving skills, using hiring processes that build women leaders and serve as an example for the private sector to address the current security talent shortage. To that end, increasingly, his petitions are focused on Israeli cyberweapons sales. According to media reports, the unit provides over half of the overall intelligence information for the Israeli Intelligence Community. Post-8200 success comes at a cost: conscription to the unit requires five years of IDF service for many members. In fact, no charges were brought against them, although in January they received letters saying they were no longer reservists. Under the green light of the Ministry of Defense, NSO Group was allowed to continue exporting internationally. In the past, he advised Verint, an Israeli-founded video-and-audio-monitoring company now based in Melville, New York. Gil Shwed, co-founder of Check Point, Israels largest cyber security company, was in 8200, as was Avi Hasson, Israels chief scientist, whose office dispenses risk-free government loans to technology start-ups. They are Zionist, but they think of themselves as peaceful, K. explains, as longing for peace., As in everywhere else in the world, the privileges of this elite come with proscriptions. Nevertheless, their expos, which came barely a month after last summers Gaza war, caused anger, much of it directed at the whistle-blowers themselves. Military spying unit to enter Israeli high school curriculums in search A 2018 study of Israeli cybersecurity founders estimated that 80% of those surveyed had experience in IDF intelligence. One of them said that during his training for 8200, he had been assigned to memorise different Arabic words for gay. Like other Israeli mathematics professors, he has worked for both the intelligence services and the private sector. You get trained super hard. In a way, this power is intoxicating, Gilad told me. . In the segment, Pines and his co-host, Shalmor Shtruzman, talk about NSO Group with a smirking remove. Communication Directorate Dec. 2, 2020 | 6:31 The intent of this video is to provide information on MARADMIN 290/20. (K. spoke to Rest of World in a personal capacity, not as a representative of this larger group. They are highly focused on what they look at certainly more focused than the NSA and they conduct their operations with a degree of tenacity and passion that you dont experience elsewhere.. From morning to night. But Abrahami had been assigned to a division he wasn't allowed to speak of, not even to his parents--a crack cybersecurity and intelligence team known as Unit 8200. All young Israelis do between 32 and 36 months military service from the age of 18. Hulio, who is actually not a graduate of 8200, has a peculiar backstory. [16][17][18], According to The New York Times, the Unit 8200's hack of Kaspersky Lab allowed them to watch in real time as Russian government hackers searched computers around the world for American intelligence programs. Urim is located in the Negev desert approximately 30km from Beersheba. The Israeli surveillance system is the new Uzi.. Tech Talent HR SentinelOne The commander of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Unit 8200, known as the country's NSA equivalent, is on the warpath after a cybersecurity startup he claimed is attempting to poach the unit's in-demand talent. In some ways, 8200 is Israel at its best and worst: a high-tech incubator that trains some of Israels smartest young people but effectively excludes minority Arabs 20 per cent of Israels population because so few do military service, which is compulsory for Jewish Israelis. Analysts can then apply data mining algorithms to this knowledge base determining, for example, from a base of several million conversations, which two are relevant. California Unemployment Insurance Code Section 14200 [3] Former Unit 8200 soldiers have, after completing their military service, gone on to founding and occupying top positions in many international IT companies and in Silicon Valley. In reality, men outnumber women in computer science degree programs (although not everywhere). [2] Afterschool programs for 1618 year olds, teaching computer coding and hacking skills, also serve as feeder programs for the unit. The private sector should take note. (The employees identity and location remain undisclosed.) The 8200 alumni association, with more than 15,000 members, hosts networking events and community outreach programmes, including a start-up accelerator open to Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews, most of whom do not serve in the army. Ouzan, stubbled, bespectacled, is a paragon of Israels 8200-to-tech pipeline. But the details of the sales are classified. He does allude that he didnt do surveillance in the occupied Palestinian territories, which means his team within 8200 likely focused on perceived threats to Israel from abroad. [3][4], According to the Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, "Unit 8200 is probably the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world and stands on a par with the NSA in everything except scale. We made it appear like a keyboard so you can infiltrate any company in the world, he told me. The translation of various items accounts for part of what is termed "basic intelligence", which is collected by the units. Practice 2: Manage the high employee turnover rate. ActiveFence's ex-Unit 8200 counter-disinformation specialists eye EU contracts . Many are more like Raphael Ouzan true believers. Unit 8200: Israel's cyber spy agency | Financial Times About a week later, in another part of Tel Aviv University, I met Gilad, a 29-year-old philosophy student, one of the veterans of Unit 8200 who had signed the letter. If there is a beating heart to Israels high-tech security state the spot on the Venn diagram where cool meets creepy it is Unit 8200. Or threatening the families of people with health problems. One example: You dont go to the Border Police, in the occupied territories, where IDF soldiers physically control Palestinians movements. There, they ran into Shalev Hulio, the CEO of NSO Group. And the innocence of heart theyll try to rob it from her by offering her a nice sum of money, he laments. The Israeli Defence Forces Intelligence Unit 8200 is most associated with priming the future tech geniuses of the startup nation. Unit 8200 is the lynchpin of Israel's success in maintaining its 54-year occupation, by engineering a policy of divide-and-rule among Palestinians and foiling any efforts they make to liberate. Theyd pay him through his bar mitzvah cash gift registry. NSOs sister company Circles sells the ability to locate a persons physical location using only their phone number. Its about going on missions. In pristine resolution, he looks, plaintively, to his side: And at this point, thats it youre no longer a kid.. At a performance of Moscows Bolshoi Ballet in his native London, he crashed the stage and let loose mice. With 5000 active duty soldiers, it is the largest military intelligence unit in the IDF. Technical knowledge isn't a requirement. Private Israeli companies have sold surveillance technology to Malaysia, Botswana, Azerbaijan, Angola, Honduras, Peru, Nigeria, Ecuador, Mexico, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Uganda, and the United Arab Emirates. (K. spoke to Rest of World on condition of anonymity). Everyone is talking about this private company. Last year, an intelligence official suggested to national security reporter Ronen Bergman that the provenance of NSO Groups technology could be the state of Israel. Losing cybersecurity talent is a chief concern at many organizations. Magshimim serves as a feeder system for potential recruits to Unit 8200, the Israeli military's legendary high-tech spy agency, considered by intelligence analysts to be one of the most. In 2008 he was awarded a medal by Mossad for services to the nation. For further information, applicants should contact their nearest New York State Department of Labor office or Local Union #200 at (631) 567-3083. Funded by the Israeli state and the Rashi Foundation, a private outfit devoted to helping underprivileged youth, it targets gifted children in Israels poorer south and north. I felt like I was doing something important, something challenging, something I would learn from and something meaningful for my country, he said. (Gilad would not allow me to print his surname or photograph his face.) He is polite, thoughtful, and at pains to not intimidate. Promising teenagers are then funneled into a variety of elite feeder programs before landing in 8200. The latter's head, Lutz Glllner, is looking to turn it into a full-fledged European counter-disinformation agency. School can be boring for these kids some fail, Uri Rotem, one of the instructors, told me, but they can do their best here, so they love it., Magshimim is not an automatic entry ticket to Unit 8200 but many of its students do their compulsory military service there: three years for Israeli boys, two years for girls. It handles open-source intelligence, threat assessment, cryptanalysis, and cyberwarfare. The security industry is filled with tons of complex problems that need solutions, problems that can't be solved if organizations only look to hire men with IT and computer science backgrounds because there aren't enough of them. It is also an elite institution whose graduates, after leaving service, can parlay their cutting-edge snooping and hacking skills into jobs in Israel, Silicon Valley or Bostons high-tech corridor. Viber, Wix, and hundreds of other high-tech startups have their origins in Unit 8200, the cyberware division of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). According to some media reports, which the IDF wont confirm, the unit was responsible for the Stuxnet computer worm deployed in 2010 against Irans computers, including ones at its nuclear facilities. As part of its recruiting program, Unit 8200 runs tests designed to identify individuals who can handle stressful events, are team players, can find innovative solution to various problems, and, most importantly, are coachable. Its Pegasus technology can purportedly hack a phone without the target even clicking a link. Sep 14, 2022 9 Intelligence personnel of the Israel Defense Forces at work. Unit 8200, or shmone matayim as its called in Hebrew, is the equivalent of Americas National Security Agency and the largest single military unit in the Israel Defence Forces. IDF Unit 8200 Officers Refuse to Fight Palestinians It is alleged[by whom?] Soldiers work in small groups, with limited resources, to crack challenges that literally, in some cases are life-and-death matters. For graduates of 8200, though, the post-army opportunities come in cybersurveillance. Unit 8200 - Gets New Commander - SpaceWatch.Global In 2014, K. and 42 other 8200 graduates released an open letter addressed to the chief of staff at the IDF, refusing on moral grounds to fulfill their IDF reserve duties. Israel exported $11 billion in cybersecurity technology in 20213 nearly 10% of the global market4and as of 2021, the country had more startup unicorns per capita than any country in the world.5 A 2018 study of Israeli cybersecurity founders estimated that 80% of those surveyed had experience in IDF intelligence.6, This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Applicants are admitted only after an online questionnaire, followed by a battery of more rigorous tests to gauge their abilities in programming, languages and thinking outside the box. Apart from 8200, the IDF also has other technological and spying units with their own cadres of alumni in business: a large air force intelligence unit, C4I, its telecommunications, computer and information technology unit, and smaller intelligence units so secret that Israelis will not utter their names. As part of its recruiting program, Unit 8200 runs tests designed to identify individuals who can handle stressful events, are team players, can find innovative solution to various problems,. In 2015, for instance, women earned 18% of all computer science degrees awarded in the US. I love the state of Israel. You dont ask questions. Youre a genius. So he said yes. A thirsty new Tesla factory comes to a parched corner of Mexico. We teach them how to work out of the box., Nir Lempert, chairman of the Unit 8200 alumni association and CEO of MER Group, a mobile communications infrastructure company, said: I think the best premise I took with me from this unit was the ability to manage big activities in uncertain situations with a lot of question marks regarding the environment and the understanding that we must fulfil the mission.. One of JVP Cyber Labs early investments was CyActive, one of whose principals, Shlomi Boutnaru, spoke at the Magshimim graduation I attended. According to intelligence analysts, 8200s remit is similar to that of the NSA or Britains Government Communications Headquarters, covering everything from analysis of information in the public domain to use of human operators and special signal intelligence. Two 17-year-old boys, both named Lior (the IDF asked me not to use the students last names), had built a cellphone from scratch and programmed it to make and receive calls until it had exploded in a power surge. Get over it. Hulio laughed it off. Whether youre using conventional weapons or whether youre using cyber, Yosef says, theyre all part of the system. Subordinate to Unit 8200 is Unit Hatzav (Hebrew name for Drimia (Hebrew: )), responsible for collecting OSINT intelligence. Women walk beneath Israeli surveillance cameras in the Old City of East Jerusalem. Israel's Unit 8200, a Conveyor Belt of High-Tech Startups Intelligence personnel of the Israel Defense Forces at work. Screenshot from YouTube. Less than a year later, the refuseniks protest is all but forgotten but Israels military-industrial-cyber complex is moving from success to success. In the tech industry, the brilliant young men and women who fight their way through the IDFs elite intelligence unit are as coveted as ever. [8] It is comparable in its function to the United States' National Security Agency and is a Ministry of Defense body just as the NSA is part of the United States Department of Defense. When I asked Tal what he wanted to do after military service, he answered somewhat overeagerly, as if I were interviewing him for a job: I would like to form my own company, or join an existing company with an important role.. He drinks a coffee out of a tiny clear glass cup. In a searingly hot afternoon at a campuslike new science park in Beer Sheva, southern Israel, I watched as a group of bright, geeky teenagers presented their graduation projects. . The project combines an office park whose tenants include Deutsche Telekom, IBM, Oracle, Lockheed Martin, EMC and PayPal with Beer Shevas Ben-Gurion University and its Cyber Security Research Centre. In Hong Kong, Cellebrite tech was allegedly used to crack phones confiscated from pro-democracy activists, including Joshua Wong, who is serving a year-long jail sentence for his involvement in the protests. If Israels well-honed hacking, spying and cyber skills, developed in the military, can be deployed in the private sector to darker effect, few are taking notice. The authors of Start-up Nation, the seminal 2009 book about Israels start-up culture, described 8200 and the Israeli militarys other elite units as the nations equivalent of Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Israel has strict military censorship. Gilad and his fellow protesters did things by the book: they remained anonymous. Most people cant handle this job. I love the people of Israel. Most realise that in gaining entry to Magshimim they are stepping on to the fast track. A minimum of 3 characters are required to be typed in the search bar in order to perform a search. Israeli Intelligence Community - Wikipedia More than half were boys but there were girls too, and 8200 is open to both. Ouzans initial IDF evaluation assigned him the profile of a fighter, which should have meant a place in a combat unit. The unit monitors and collects military intelligencerelated information from television, radio, newspapers, and the internet. Although unconfirmed, Unit 8200 is widely speculated to be jointly responsible with the NSA for the famous Stuxnet computer malware that crippled one-fifth of Irans nuclear centrifuges in the 2000s. Bargaining Unit Members Expand Collapse section. Israel has so much military sensitivity that, in effect, many of these cyberweapon sales are military agreements between governments., But when NSO is covered in international media, the role of the Ministry of Defense is rarely mentioned. How the Israel Defense Forces' approach to diversity can help ease the Candiru goes after servers; its named after the Amazonian fish famed for parasitizing the human urethra., Many of these companies are marketed globally on the prestige of their former Israeli intelligence founders and employees. SecurityWeek.Com explains that Unit 8200 is generally considered among the elite of the world's intelligence agencies. The Secret to High-tech Success? This Elite Israeli Army Unit [1] It is subordinate to Aman, the military intelligence directorate. The 2013 attack fell on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, and in that and subsequent attacks, some of the hackers have threatened to unleash an electronic Holocaust. In 2015, he discovered a sale to the Myanmar military after the head of the military posted photos of Myanmar soldiers with Israeli weapons on Facebook. How it opened up doors afterwards. With Israeli technologies, they manage to prevent protests before they happen. They didnt treat our criticism seriously.. Or threatening to cut off medical care from people with health problems. They just need someone to give them the opportunity. Meanwhile, females who like to geek out in their free time and play video games often face harassment and abuse. With 5000 active duty soldiers, it is the largest military intelligence unit in the IDF. Though forbidden from discussing it, many 8200 veterans are happy to drop the units number freely in the corporate world as an elite calling card. Workplace Partnership Council (WPC) Teamsters Local 317; Adjuncts United Expand Collapse section. Isaac Herzog, head of the centre-left Zionist Union party, played up his past service in 8200 when campaigning to unseat Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister in the recent election. From IDF to Inc: The Israeli Cybersecurity Startup Conveyor Belt The Israeli military allows almost no information about Unit 8200 to leak out: it has a base in the Negev desert but the precise location of its installations remains secret - as is the. This network is absolutely global, very powerful, and likes to come together to do good., When trying to explain the specifics of what made it so special to him, Ouzan points to the audacity of the unit. Its one thing to spy on Iranians or Syrians, another to spy on Palestinians, because they are subjects of Israel, Gilad said.