From rockets to routers, Hezbollah’s cyber war

By Eli Garcia —

After Israel blew up Hezbollah operatives by remotely exploding their pagers, Hezbollah’s cyber warfare unit was more than doubled in size and funding.

The Cedar Unit in Dahieh, Beirut, Lebanon — staffed by an estimated 300 hackers paid directly by Iran — mine civil and military data from Israel to leak onto the Dark Web (or the regular web) to intimidate, destabilize and undermine trust.

“Hezbollah shifted from rockets to routers,” says JNS’ Doron Spielman.

In April 2020, Iran exploited a weakness in the Israeli Water Authority‘s systems, causing dangerous levels of chlorine to poison drinking water. Iran very nearly succeeded but was detected and stopped.

After the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas incursion in Israel, more than 15 previously unknown hacker groups linked to Iran mined the Israeli data and compromised tens of thousands of Israelis.

However, Iran’s online successes are outnumbered by Israel’s. The Israeli cyber warfare unit, Unit 8200, managed its first success in 2009 when it (probably with the help of the United States) developed Stuxnet program and neutralized hundreds of centrifuges, used to produce weapon grade Uranium.

The program reported to engineers on the computer screen that speeds were normal when in actuality, the centrifuges sped up enough to throw the entire machine into kilter and self-sabotage.

That success was followed up by the Hezbollah pager strike that killed thousands of Hezbollah militants.

Aside from these news-making operations, the Israeli cyber warfare unit chiefly dedicates itself to detection of threats, disruption of bad actors and creating strategic chaos in known enemies.

“Tens of thousands of hostile probes are detected daily and traced to Iranian linked infrastructure targeting power grids, water systems, hospitals and even the financial networks,” Spielman says. “Once a hostile network is identified and mapped, it may quietly stop working: servers might fail, communications lag, infrastructure and instructions arrive late or not at all.

“Iranian cyber units linked to the IRGC have suffered repeated unexpected breakdowns during moments of regional tension,” he adds.

Unit 8200 works for Mossad, Shin Bet and the IDF. Mossad, like CIA, works external to Israel, while Shin Bet, like the FBI, works internally.

The Israelis are so effective that they’re cyber unit is known as the Second Iron Dome. There’s the interception of launched missiles above ground by sophisticated rockets, and there’s the interruption of systems and services online.

“That’s the direction that war is headed. Cyber defense does not make the headlines, but it does shape the
outcome,” Spielman says. “The future of warfare is not cyber of kinetic; it’s both together. The digital layer and the physical layer are moving together deliberately in the same moment.”

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