unit 8200 Concepts

Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations

by Ronen Bergman · 30 Jan 2018 · 1,071pp · 295,220 words

War Chapter 29: “More Suicide Bombers Than Explosive Vests” Chapter 30: “The Target Has Been Eliminated, but the Operation Failed” Chapter 31: The Rebellion in Unit 8200 Chapter 32: Picking Anemones Chapter 33: The Radical Front Chapter 34: Killing Maurice Chapter 35: Impressive Tactical Success, Disastrous Strategic Failure Photo Insert Dedication Acknowledgments

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Il-14 aircraft. AMAN assigned the task of identifying and tracking the air convoy to its signals intelligence (SIGINT) unit. The unit (known nowadays as Unit 8200) had already racked up a number of prominent successes in the 1948–49 war, and afterward AMAN invested many resources in the development of the

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him and his bodyguards go into the house. But according to the protocol Rabin had signed, that was not sufficient. Three fluent Arabic speakers from Unit 8200 who’d been co-opted to the Mossad for the mission had put in hundreds of hours studying Abu Jihad’s voice and quirks of

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to give the initiative a chance. The negotiations, however, were kept secret, even from the heads of Israel’s military and intelligence organizations. Rabin instructed Unit 8200, which eavesdropped on Palestinian communications, to report anything they heard about the discussion directly and solely to him. Officially, this was for operational security—any

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chair,” as it was known, that the Israeli government was conducting advanced negotiations with the PLO behind his back. Rabin had ordered AMAN’s SIGINT Unit 8200 to bring anything they heard about the negotiations directly to him, but he had not done the same with the Mossad. Shavit angrily confronted Rabin

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AMAN, “we learned a lot, including the layout of the project site where the reactor and adjoining laboratories were situated at Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center.” Unit 8200, AMAN’s SIGINT arm, established a top-secret task force, nicknamed “Apocalypse,” that tapped into telephone and telex lines, and Rainbow agents planted bugs in

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. By midnight, the video footage taken by the airborne cameras had been analyzed, documenting the huge damage done to the reactor. At 3 A.M., Unit 8200’s Apocalypse Team intercepted a phone call made by one of the engineers describing an inspection of the bombed-out site in darkness. The engineer

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the operation, the small AMAN war room opened at 7 A.M. Everyone was crammed in: SOE chief Arditi and representatives of the collection department, Unit 8200, the AMAN counterterrorism section, the drone unit, and the air force intelligence wing. The actual drone operators were in a trailer near the Lebanese border

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, close to the Lebanese-Syrian border, where an officers’ training course was under way. Aerial photographs from a Scout drone and radio communication monitoring by Unit 8200 confirmed it. Then, on June 2, after weeks of careful planning, Israeli Air Force Defender helicopters attacked. Cadets scattered in all directions, desperate for cover

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in Russian, so he spoke that language before he learned Hebrew. When he turned eighteen, his knowledge of Russian made him a natural candidate for Unit 8200, where he listened in on the Russian advisers who were then assisting the Egyptian and Syrian armies. When he retired from the IDF, he represented

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operatives had already had three days to plan, he immediately realized that they had only a fraction of the intelligence they needed. No one from Unit 8200 (AMAN’s SIGINT arm) was there, nor anyone from Unit 9900 to operate the drones. Even if they had been there, there were no monitors

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, whose relations with the Shin Bet were patchy at best, to put themselves at the Shin Bet’s disposal for as long as they required. Unit 8200, the SIGINT arm of AMAN, underwent the biggest change. Previously, it had dealt mainly with Israel’s external enemies, mainly Syria. Now, many of its

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close to shutting down at the beginning of the peace process, was converted and put entirely at the disposal of the Shin Bet. It became Unit 8200’s largest base, and effectively a production line for targeted killings. AMAN and the air force put their fleet of observation aircraft—and, eventually, the

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,” the NIO says, slightly annoyed. “You’re sitting in my chair.” Amir (not his real name) was an NIO, a bright young man assigned to Unit 8200, one of the most prestigious outfits in the IDF. He worked, like all NIOs, at a base protected by reinforced concrete, monitoring information. Most of

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, a hapless shop owner on the other—could die. And he needed to do all of this very quickly. Officially, Amir and his colleagues at Unit 8200’s Turban base were responsible for stopping terror attacks. Unofficially, they were deciding whom Israel killed. True, it was Sharon who authorized the targeted killings

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a target for elimination. If the man actually was involved in terror, it was a process that would take a few weeks, no more.” Often, Unit 8200 also picked out buildings to bomb. Sharon, along with IDF chief of staff Moshe Yaalon, held the Palestinian Authority fully responsible for every attack, even

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aid money, or an office cleaner who came in early, before work hours.” — THE FACT THAT SUCH a conversation would take place among members of Unit 8200 was fitting. This, after all, was the unit that had tried its hardest to warn AMAN in the days preceding the surprise attacks on Israel

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for the benefit of the security of the state. The case study that was used outlined an incident in 1997 in which some men from Unit 8200, attempting to locate calls concerning Osama bin Laden, accidentally picked up then purposely recorded some cellphone conversations between Tom Cruise, who was working in the

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air force and AMAN. “They were saying, ‘Listen, your unit is refusing to give us such-and-such information,’ ” Brigadier General Yair Cohen, commander of Unit 8200 at the time, recalled. “I said that they must be mistaken, that there was no such thing in 8200 as not providing information, that it

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vindication of Amir’s moral stand, but it was too late to silence the storm that the “mutiny in 8200” had unleashed in the military. Unit 8200’s command came under heavy fire from all sides of the defense establishment—even Prime Minister Sharon let it be known that he took a

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refuse to carry out orders. From the commanders’ perspective, putting down a Palestinian uprising didn’t leave a lot of room for squishy liberal objectors. “Unit 8200 is the epitome of the culture of secrecy, always far out of sight, always alone, isolated from the rest of the army, high-quality and

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, fax, text, email—was being intercepted by Israeli intelligence. “He truly believed that every time Mustafa called Mohammed, Moishele was listening in,” an officer from Unit 8200 said. “And that was not necessarily a drastic mistake.” To minimize the risk, Assad instructed General Muhammad Suleiman—his liaison to the Radical Front—to

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that was screened at internal gatherings. The Mossad got hold of a copy, and it was shown in December to a group of experts from Unit 8200 and the Mossad. During an all-night session, they scrutinized it in the hope of learning new details about the shadowy group. Late in the

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Mossad and the CIA have forged links with each other as well. Particularly important was the relationship between the American NSA and its Israeli counterpart, Unit 8200 of AMAN. Among the documents that Edward Snowden leaked, there were several historical surveys of these relations, dating back to the early 1960s and documenting

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took extreme precautionary measures and an opportunity to strike at him never arose. Nevertheless, thanks to this close surveillance, on October 7, 1985, AMAN’s Unit 8200 intercepted a phone call between Zaidan and a team of his men who hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, off the Egyptian coast. The

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Gilboa, Morning Twilight, 25–28 (Hebrew). Ronen Bergman, “AMAN Chief to PM Barak,” Yedioth Ahronoth, February 12, 2016. They planned to have him assassinated A Unit 8200 communications monitor by the name of Mor, a fluent Arabic speaker, was the expert on identifying Mughniyeh’s voice. Out of respect for Mor’s

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years, “Maurice,” echoed her name. However, for many years, Imad Mughniyeh had seemingly vanished, and Unit 8200 could find no trace of him in Hezbollah’s communications traffic. On May 21, 2000, Mor, stationed at a Unit 8200 Grizim base in northern Israel, identified his voice while listening in to the communications of a

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2009. to put themselves at the Shin Bet’s disposal Interviews with Galant, September 4, 2014, Dichter, November 4, 2010, and Farkash, November 7, 2016. Unit 8200…underwent the biggest change Interview with “Fidel,” April 2014. put their fleet of observation aircraft Yitzhak Ilan Lecture, Herzlia IDC, May 2013. The result of

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,” interview with Yoel Peterburg, Anashim, June 27, 2006. “has taken hold among the cedars” Interview with Weissglass, December 23, 2014. CHAPTER 31: THE REBELLION IN UNIT 8200 Amir (not his real name) was an NIO Interview with “Amir,” March 2011. He asked to remain anonymous for fear that revealing his identity could

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role in the selection of targets for assassination was dramatic” Interview with “Globus,” April 2011. the intention was simply to kill someone—anyone Unit 8200, Center 7143, Reaction of Unit 8200 to Information Request Regarding the Bombing of Fatah Facility in Khan Yunis, March 4, 2003 (author’s archive, received from “Globus”). “ ‘isn’t

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’s secured server (author’s archive, received from “Globus”). forty minutes before the operation’s time window closed Interview with Dani Harari, August 18, 2011. “Unit 8200 is the epitome of the culture of secrecy” Interview with “Roman,” March 2011. only someone actually pressing the trigger Interview with Elazar Stern, August 18

Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy

by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud · 17 Jan 2023 · 350pp · 115,802 words

because of congenital misbehavior). Both completed their compulsory service in the Israeli military and then some, though neither had served in the elite counterintelligence force—Unit 8200. Shalev and Omri remained in touch and passed through their late twenties together, the two men spinning hard to make themselves machers in the hottest

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scale a new software program created by a couple of their old Haifa schoolmates—one of whom had served in the Israeli army’s renowned Unit 8200. The innovation aimed to solve an emerging tech issue, a conundrum with a maddening feedback loop. When CommuniTake was founded back in 2009, the growing

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that kind of intelligence failure. Over the next five decades, Israel fed the best of its brainpower into its elite military intelligence service, known as Unit 8200, to make sure there would be no repeat disaster. The top-secret unit—its members were not allowed to speak its name or tell their

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about their assignment—evolved with technology, from analog to digital, from landline to cell phone, and always one step ahead. Innovation mattered above all in Unit 8200, and innovation could come from anywhere in the ranks. The rosh gadol who landed in 8200 weren’t selected merely for their phenomenal test scores

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I had the most responsibility and the most impact to other people.” “You’re also part of this secret thing,” says another former member of Unit 8200. “Sometimes you know about special operations or special abilities that nobody knows about outside and you feel you’re special and part of this special

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FEW years after Apple set up its new R&D facility in the Promised Land and peopled it with the highly trained rosh gadol from Unit 8200, the Israeli cybersecurity industry boomed. The data was all there in the charts that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu liked to flash on the big screen

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’t care to use their skills on anything but defense, true cybersecurity, and they wouldn’t work for any company trafficking in spyware. But with Unit 8200 disgorging a thousand or so hyper-trained cyberbrains every year, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie didn’t have much trouble filling their growing ranks with

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and Omri did have going for them in corporate recruitment, even as outsiders, was that the stated values of NSO were not so different from Unit 8200’s. We’re saving lives here. The work itself was challenging, too: like the chance to go head-to-head with Apple’s engineers, reputed

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we don’t have a diplomatic relationship,” one former Israeli intelligence commander explained to us. When their intelligence counterparts in these countries started asking for Unit 8200–level spyware technology to fight ISIS or homegrown terrorists, the Mossad had to demur. The Israeli military did not share its technology with anyone, not

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, Paranjoy Guha Timberg, Craig Time magazine Togo Tolfi, Lahcen Tor Travère, Audrey Truecaller Trump, Donald Trump, Donald, Jr. Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Twitter Tzachi Uganda Ukraine Unit 8200 alumni of United Arab Emirates DarkMatter and Israel and NSO and United Kingdom United Nations Guiding Principles of Human Rights Security Council United States (see

Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle

by Dan Senor and Saul Singer · 3 Nov 2009 · 285pp · 81,743 words

both these threats, having funded and built companies to protect against them. One of them, Checkpoint—an Israeli company also started by young alumni from Unit 8200—is worth $5 billion today, is publicly traded on the NASDAQ, and includes among its customers the majority of Fortune 100 companies and most national

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military has at times surprised even Israeli leaders. In 1974, during the first premiership of Yitzhak Rabin, a young female soldier from the IDF’s Unit 8200—the same unit in which the founders of Fraud Sciences later served—was kidnapped by terrorists. Major General Aharon Zeevi-Farkash (known as Farkash), who

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continued the story: “So I told him, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, this individual sergeant is not alone. It was not a mistake. All the soldiers in Unit 8200 must know these things because if we limited such information to officers, we simply would not have enough people to get the work done—we

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its identity, moving all of its management to China, where young Israeli and Chinese executives work side by side. Gil Kerbs, an Israeli alumnus of Unit 8200, also spends a lot of time in China. When he left the IDF, he picked up and moved to Beijing to study Chinese intensively, working

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in the Arab world; and we are grateful for their contributions. With speed and deftness, our friend Judy Heiblum of Sterling Lord Literistic—and a Unit 8200 alumnus—made important suggestions on the structure of the manuscript. We thank all the friends and family who read the manuscript; your sharp and candid

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Moshe (res.), Likud member of Knesset; IDF chief of staff in 2002–05; May 2008. Zeevi-Farkash, Major General Aharon (res.), former head of Intelligence Unit 8200, IDF; May 2008. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Dan Senor, adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, has been involved in

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth · 9 Feb 2021 · 651pp · 186,130 words

with skills, without jobs,” Sabien explained. But the most talented hackers, he told me, were based in Israel, many of them veterans of Israel’s Unit 8200. I asked Sabien how old his youngest supplier was, and he recalled a transaction with a sixteen-year-old kid in Israel. It was a

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up with the name. Others said it was purposely chosen for the five Olympic rings, symbolizing the unprecedented five-way cooperation between NSA, Israel’s Unit 8200, the CIA, Mossad, and the national energy labs. For months, teams of hackers, spies, and nuclear physicists traveled back and forth between Fort Meade, Langley

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still do not know where—with two glaring exceptions—these zero-days came from, whether they were developed “in-house” by TAO or Israel’s Unit 8200 or procured off the underground market. What we do know is that the worm—in its final form, 500 kilobytes—was fifty times bigger than

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technically, this second exploit wasn’t a zero-day at all. It had been detailed in the obscure Polish hacking magazine Hakin9, which TAO and Unit 8200 hackers apparently kept close tabs on, but nobody at Microsoft or in Iran had bothered to read. The flaw detailed in Hakin9 went like this

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they had left to do as much damage as possible. He ordered the generals to accelerate the program. Over the next few weeks, TAO and Unit 8200 pushed out another aggressive round of strikes, destroying another round of centrifuges, while the worm began zigzagging all over the web, aimlessly searching for more

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with abysmal human rights records began feverishly pulling together their own offensive cyber units. But without the talent of the coders at the NSA or Unit 8200, these countries started flooding the zero-day market, outbidding Western governments and front companies for zero-day exploits in pursuit of the kind of success

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by many in the third world, Android phones, and, of course, iPhones. NSO’s surveillance technology was originally developed by graduates of Israel’s Intelligence Unit 8200. In 2008 two Israeli high school buddies—Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie—marketed the technology to cell-phone companies as a way to troubleshoot customers

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election systems, here factors limiting, here individuals, here infrastructure, here, here, here, here, here, here, here media attacks, here nuclear plants, here purpose, here, here Unit 8200 (Israel), here, here, here, here Unit 61398 (China), here Unit 74455 (Russia), here United Kingdom, here United States allies, hacking, here cyber-arms control agreement

Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War

by Fred Kaplan · 1 Mar 2016 · 383pp · 105,021 words

they reported seeing no planes on their radar screens. The Israelis managed to pull off the attack—code-named Operation Orchard—because, ahead of time, Unit 8200, their secret cyber warfare bureau, had hacked the Syrian air-defense radar system. They did so with a computer program called Suter, developed by a

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link connecting the radar with the screens of the radar operators. At the same time, Suter hacked into the screens’ video signal, so that the Unit 8200 crew could see what the radar operators were seeing. If all was going well, they would see blank screens—and all went well. It harked

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. So he told Alexander to proceed. This would be a huge operation, a joint effort by the NSA, CIA, and Israel’s cyber war bureau, Unit 8200. Meanwhile, Alexander got the operation going with a simpler trick. The Iranians had installed devices called uninterruptible power supplies on the generators that pumped electricity

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nation’s phone system. These sorts of joint operations had blossomed with the growth of TAO. The NSA also enjoyed close relations with Israel’s Unit 8200, which was tight with the human spies of Mossad. If it needed access to a machine or a self-contained network that wasn’t hooked

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up to the Internet, it could call on any of several collaborators—IOC, Unit 8200, the local spy services, or certain defense contractors in a number of allied nations—to plant a transmitter or beacon that TAO could home in

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, the Iranians had “demonstrated a clear ability to learn from the capabilities and actions of others”—namely, those of the NSA and of Israel’s Unit 8200. It was the latest, most dramatic illustration of what agency analysts and directors had been predicting for decades: what we can do to them, they

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Islam, Sunni-Shiite split in, 147, 160 Israel, 216 Iranian nuclear program and, 203–4 Stuxnet and, 207 Syrian reactor bombed by, 160–61, 198 Unit 8200 of, 161, 205, 207, 213 J-39, 7, 70, 81, 110–12, 120 anti-Milosevic campaign of, 114–18, 119 and 1999 Balkans bombing campaign

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security as low priority of, 172–73 North Korean cyber attack on, 213 “Trilateral Memorandum Agreement,” 216–17 Truman, Harry, 12 Turbulence, 157–58, 195 Unit 8200 (Israel), 161 United Arab Emirates, 75, 76 United States: Chinese relations with, 221–28 as digital communications hub, 191–92, 193, 248 see also five

The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul

by Isabel Kershner · 16 May 2023 · 472pp · 145,476 words

intake of conscripts for the army’s cyber units. Speaking at a cyber-security conference at Tel Aviv University in 2022, the deputy commander of Unit 8200 said that nearly three-quarters of the current personnel were under the age of twenty-three, which he described as a magic ingredient that set

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, was “to build trust, which is like building peace.” The investors’ interest was similarly piqued by Yehonatan Ben-Hamozeg, a gray-haired, retired veteran of Unit 8200 and now the CEO of an agricultural intelligence company, Agrint. Dubbed the “tree listener,” he had developed a sensor for the early detection of red

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selective objection and, 260 Shalit incident and, 255–56 Shmueli incident and, 267–69 Talpiot program, 300 tech and, 298, 300–303 Unit 81, 300 Unit 8200, 300, 301, 319 in West Bank, 243, 244, 246–48, 264 women in, 242, 245, 249–51, 261–66, 303 Israel Democracy Institute, 249, 257

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Sabras Tzuri, Avner, 77 U Ukraine, 342 Russian invasion of, 294–95 Umm al-Fahem, 157, 194–99 Umm Kulthum, 69, 73 Unit 81, 300 Unit 8200, 300, 301, 319 United Arab Emirates, 12, 40, 143, 296–98, 313–21 United Arab List, see Raam United Nations, 31–33, 91, 259, 284

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace

by Ronald J. Deibert · 13 May 2013 · 317pp · 98,745 words

with former staffers of the very agencies it serves – thousands of replicas of former NSA director Kenneth Minihan. For example, the Israeli intelligence services elite Unit 8200, responsible for that country’s advanced electronic warfare capabilities, has spawned numerous alumni who have gone on to create leading-edge companies in the cyber

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manager, or the person who had an idea for the project will be from 8200,” says Yair Cohen, a former brigadier general who once commanded Unit 8200. In the United States, meanwhile, the NSA partners with “cleared” universities to train students in cyber operations for intelligence, military, and law enforcement jobs. Though

Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel

by Max Blumenthal · 27 Nov 2012 · 840pp · 224,391 words

Arabs who had found places in Israel’s Start-Up Nation. The exclusive environment was largely the byproduct of the influence of Israeli army’s Unit 8200, a hyper-secretive cyber-warfare division that trained soldiers in the dark arts of surveillance and hacking before sending them off into the job market

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by men and women who worked together in the unit. When hiring new engineers and programmers, [start-up founders] typically turn to their former unit [Unit 8200], safe in the knowledge that the military has invested heavily in selecting and training its recruits.” Few start-up companies reported receiving so few applications

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

by Bruce Schneier · 2 Mar 2015 · 598pp · 134,339 words

before this data is shared with another country to protect our privacy, but Israel seems to be an exception. The NSA gives Israel’s secretive Unit 8200 “raw SIGINT”—that’s signals intelligence. Even historical enemies are sharing intelligence with the US, if only on a limited basis. After 9/11, Russia

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Ukraine, 2, 39 Ulbricht, Ross (Dread Pirate Roberts), 105 “uncanny valley” phenomenon, 54–55 Underwear Bomber, 136, 139 UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, 96 Unit 8200, 77 United Kingdom: anti-discrimination laws in, 93 data retention law in, 222 GCHQ of, see Government Communications Headquarters in international intelligence partnerships, 76 Internet

How Long Will Israel Survive Threat Wthn

by Gregg Carlstrom · 14 Oct 2017 · 337pp · 100,541 words

discriminates against Christian and Muslim applicants. And the army can provide useful skills: many of Israel’s high-tech entrepreneurs, for example, are veterans of Unit 8200, an elite branch of the intelligence services. (It cocreated the Stuxnet virus that wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear facilities, causing centrifuges to spin out

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education, 95–6; political representation of, 65, 111, 114; territory inhabited by, 63 Union for Reform Judaism (Union of American Hebrew Congregations): members of, 131 Unit 8200: 25 United Kingdom (UK): 43, 80, 200; Brexit Referendum (2016), 209–13; Jewish diaspora in, 79; London, 1, 10, 22, 70, 184, 187; Northern Ireland