Unit 8200: Inside Israel’s Elite Force from Cyberwarfare to its Cybersecurity Startup Mafia

Unit-8200 has historically shaken the world and market of cybersecurity quite often, especially since the Stuxnet to the very recent pager blasts.

Hence through this brief case study with in-depth research and a bit of analysis I try to gauge and present the true weights, strategies and secrets that were behind these disruptions.

This case-study alike article is divided into 4 major sections each with a stipulated area to uncover and understand.

1. Deep Dive into Pager Blasts and Unit 8200’s Recent Limelight
2. Technical Insights into Unit 8200 ’s major cyberwarfare feats
3. The Strategy, Vision, and Structure behind world’s most successful cybersecurity program.
4. Unit 8200 and it’s Entrepreneurial Mafia

Deep Dive into Pager Blasts and Unit 8200’s Recent Limelight

Pager Blasts and the subsequent attacks embossed and highlighted that the new-dawn of cyberwarfare has arrived and Hezbollah was the first to feel the heat , while nation states gazed at these incidents with utter amazement as this drove havocs into their defense departments internally as the dynamics of cyberattacks seem to have evolved again , like the Stuxnet and subsequent attacks pioneered and urged the world to make sure that the critical national infrastructures will be the core targets for the enemy states while it also highlighted the fact that how pure cyber sophistication and technological strides be enough for pulling off major attacks with high impact.

On the other hand, the pager blasts have proven that technological sophistication will definitely be the driving force, but pulling off a cyber supply chain attack is simply more than just technical sophistication and hence is much deadlier to a nation both physically and psychologically.

To the amazement of most, people wondered that the whole point of switching to the pagers by Hezbollah was to minimize the attack surface to such extent that that the enemy camp’s technical advancements would all become meaningless and could be nullified at ease.

With no official remains out there, all fingers from around the world pointed that the pager blasts and subsequent supply chain attacks were all the acts powered by Israel and its biggest cyberwarfare force: “The Unit 8200 force”

Gauging the Depths of the Pager Blasts Attack

The Pager Blast attack was a highly strategic operation planned approximately around 2 years before the incident was actually triggered took keeping in mind the time required for the supply-chain expositions that had to be made, for Hezbollah to place orders for these specialized AR-924 model pagers branded under the Trademark of the Taiwanese Corporation Apollo Gold and the other ICV82 walkie-talkies being branded by the Japanese ICOM.

The initial theories stipulated that this could be due to some lithium-ion based battery explosions arising due to voltage surge but all these were disregarded, battery experts could practically claim that though battery explosions could be fatal but the actual fatalities were far more than what potentially batteries could trigger, in some reports also claimed to have found that the pagers had ingrained around 20g of explosives into them.

Well technically the attack was a result of 2 lacunas around the entire pager architecture and working principles:

1. Absolute Lack of Authentication or Encryption Mechanisms throughout the RF communications involved with these pagers:

This made the pagers easy target for the adversaries to remotely detonate explosives and also intercept RFs, keeping in mind that SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) being one of the most powerful operations domains of the Unit 8200.

2. Product Supply Chain was Compromised with no security checks nor any standards or controls:

Hezbollah being a designated terror group had to manage to fetch these equipment’s from underground parallel markets operating across the world, this is what the attackers took complete leverage off hence establishing shell-alike firms like BAC Consulting. While sources suggesting that though BAC had licenses to trade in the name of Gold Apollo , in reality the manufacturing of these AR-924 pagers is still unknown as the BAC currently seems to be an intermediate shady distributor firm , while the walkie-talkies which were traced to the Japanese ICOM were found to be stopped manufacturing since last 10 years. This clearly highlights the fact that these equipment’s essentially bought by Hezbollah around 5 months back were clearly counterfeits sold by attackers as trojan horses into the enemy camp.

Technical Insights:

Some intricate sources said that the attack was pulled of with a combination of Firmware vulnerabilities that were explicitly introduced into it so that this attack could be triggered remotely, while complimenting this the explosive material was laced inside the pager’s lithium battery. Architecturally these pagers had 5 components: A Power Source, An Explosive Charge, and a Case to put it all in.

The detonator and the explosive charge were additionally instituted to weaponize it. Lacing the detonator and the small explosive charge inside its metal casing made it impossible for it to be detected with imaging or X-rays.

Technical Insights into Unit 8200 ’s major cyberwarfare feats

Though until now we are purely judging the success of Unit 8200 on the basis of its technical prowess, but it has always been complimented with a high degree of HUM-INT (Human Intelligence).

Additonally, most of Unit-8200 ops and the success allied to them were a result of their strategic and collaborative ties with the US and other national intelligence units.

A glance into a few more disruptive cyberwarfare feats of the Unit 8200 make us understand the level of technical prowess possessed by them.

The Flame / Sky Wiper / Operation Olympic Games:

A Computer Malware based Cyber Espionage Toolkit allegedly developed jointly by Israel and USA.

Impact:

This toolkit was found to be way ahead of it’s time as it did in the most sophisticated manner fetched and recorded every small host detail from keystrokes to specifically aimed for retrieving the Auto-CAD and allied design diagrams, audio and etc. By 2012 it had impacted approx. around 1000 plus machines and servers across the middle east.

TTPs and Technology:

• The Deployment was based on Rootkit alike functionalities remaining in total stealth modes it was also found to remain in activated modes for around 5–8 years.
• It’s advanced spreading techniques were based on masquerading as a proxy for Windows Update.
• Regarded as the most complex malware found ever (until 2012) as it used uncommon Lua Scripting Language used by Game Programmers, alongside an SQLite DB for data storage hence with an uncommonly large size of around 20 MB.
• Also had a ‘Kill’ command allied to it’s ops for remote wipes all the traces on demand.
• While Flame also capitalized upon the utilizing a fraudulent certificate from a Microsoft Terminal Server that still used the weak MD5 hashing algorithm for signing hence producing a counterfeit certificate for some malware components.

The Duqu:

Popularly Regarded as the “Son of Stuxnet” it was a sophisticated malware toolkit resembling Stuxnet but focused on information gathering for cyber espionage, targeting Microsoft Windows systems.

TTPs and Technology:

• Similarity to Stuxnet: Duqu shares design elements and mechanisms with Stuxnet, hinting at a common origin, possibly among the same developers.
• Microsoft Word Zero-Day Exploit: Like Stuxnet, Duqu uses a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. CrySyS Lab identified the dropper as a Microsoft Word document that exploits the Win32k TrueType font parsing engine (tracked as MS11–087), allowing execution through the T2EMBED.DLL font parsing engine if not patched.
• Modular Components: Duqu includes a keylogger that records keystrokes and takes screenshots, with data sent to remote servers for intelligence gathering.
• Communication Module: Duqu uses a covert communication channel over HTTP/HTTPS, with binary data obfuscated as JPEG images for discreet transmission to Command & Control servers.

The Strategy, Vision, and Structure behind world’s most successful cybersecurity program

As a constituent unit of the Israel Defense Forces post 1946 it was a normal intelligence crop aimed serving for basic intelligence tasks, fed by the pre-independence British techniques.

Consequently, the establishment of an electronic intelligence and warfare unit named to be unit 515 was born with early objectives of countering the rise of the electronic age in the west and the enemy camp.

On contrary to the unit’s current capabilities, historically it had pretty humble beginnings, during 1950’s the unit was supplied the American surplus hardware for its initial SIGINT operations and research.

But as the saying goes by “ Necessity is the Mother of all Inventions “ , Israel had complex guerilla ops to be executed very early as a young and independent nation , especially the continuous Arab invasions during the 50’s and 60’s brought out the raw “DAVKA” attitude out of the unit , which is the Hebrew phrase for : Ensuring Competitive Edge over Enemy , whatsoever the circumstances maybe and probably this attitude proved to be the soul of it’ s growth and fostered its current domination and powers.

Subsequently it changed its name to another random number: 8200 (as per most sources).

While with its nomenclature it also embraced its domination by beginning inhouse manufacturing of both software and hardware resources hence diminishing the reliance on the American aid.

With time, the age of computation arrived and novel challenges evoked through it, which made this SIGINT based electronic warfare unit turn itself into a full-fledged cyberwarfare unit.

The National Strategy has truly shaped the Israel’s cybersecurity ecosystem and it’s the will at the helm truly made a difference.

While it all began around 2002 when despite having more urgent and exceptionally lethal non-cyber threats, as a part of it’ s vision program during 2002 itself it had positioned its cyber defense posture by introducing probably the earliest Critical Infrastructure Protection Arrangement of 2002 as part of it’s latter National Cyber Strategy.

This gave birth to several pioneers like the new CIP organization known as Re’em (the National Information Security Agency), further this also made some stringent on-ground arrangements mandatory like to appoint and employ dedicated IT-security personnel team and etc.

Post — 2010 the cyber world changed by manifolds and so keep up with the pace and rather surpass it by becoming a pioneer , Israel introduced the National Cyber Initiative Expert Review wherein under the leadership of Major-General (Res.) Professor Isaac Ben-Israel, who at that time was the Chairperson of the National Council for Research and Development was approached by the then helm of affairs Benjamin Netanyahu to strategize the way ahead , this review then swayed the entire vision and resources towards 3 major goals :

1. Positioning Israel as a World Leader in terms of Cyber-Defence and allied technologies.
2. Creating and fostering an independent cyberwarfare-based R&D ecosystem that would empower public and private enterprises in Israel to develop in-house cyber technologies.
3. Reinventing Isarel’s Cyber-Défense Posture and placing it at the core of its National Defence Agenda.

Unit 8200 was always at the centre stage of this entire initiative. As strategized the unit would serve as the cradle for creating the best minds in cyber while nurturing them further with the military grade discipline adding the national vision and understanding the larger spectrum of the cyber world that would drive the entrepreneurial spirit amongst these raw and exceptionally talented bunch.

Though it may initially seem that like any other army unit this too would simply have independent military officers trained for technical specificities while Israel had an amazing grassroots empowered recruitment program specifically created for the Unit 8200, wherein it all begin from a after school program popularly known as “Magshimim”.

This was a simple pipeline program for the Unit 8200 wherein the hunt would be for diverse yet candidates with certain specific abilities, while basic computer knowledge wasn’t a pre-requisite rather the hunt was for raw smartness, logical aptitude and people skills to certain extent that could further be transformed into cyber-security skills on complementing it with technical knowledge primers.

Israel has a mandatory military service post the age of 18 for all citizens for about 3 years, while the selection for the allied services and categories do vary but for Unit 8200 which is considered to be the most difficult to get into is purely based through training programs like Magshimem launched by the government specifically to provide the talent pipeline to this elite unit.

The Secrets behind successful execution of technical sophistication like Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame is the fact that this Unit is empowered by the youth, their raw ideas and hence the results prove these: Using a Video-Game Scripting Language (Lua) for creating a Malware was something that the world never thought and hence left these established states amazed.

The Candidates selected then undergo a uniquely structured training program at merely 16–18 years of age which fundamentally invokes and then leverages over their curiosity.

Post-schools they undergo three-hours of cybersecurity training sessions, and then over the course of three years they are fed with college-grade coursework’s across programming projects, computing theory, implementing cryptographic protocols, reverse-engineering malware, and studying the architecture and design of computer networks.

“We are a little country, and we have a lot of enemies, so we need to secure our data ….”

“When we were just kids, we didn’t have anything we could do about these threats, but now when we are getting into the army, we finally have the power to do something about it ….”

- Quoting Candidates from the Magshimem

Technical abilities kept aside an important component of these Unit-8200 feeding grounds is this nationalistic attitude which is embossed into minds of these young bunch quite early and hence this drives the larger vision and targets.

Unit 8200 and it’s Entrepreneurial Mafia

• CyberArk — Privileged access management; valued at around $6 billion.
• NSO Group — Surveillance technology (notably Pegasus spyware); private, valuation not disclosed.
• Snyk — Open-source security and DevSecOps; valued at approximately $7.4 billion.
• Wiz — Cloud security; valued at about $10 billion.
• Sentra — Cloud data security; early-stage startup, valuation around $30 million.
• Check Point Software — Network and endpoint security; market cap around $16 billion.
• Palo Alto Networks — Enterprise security (firewalls, threat intelligence); market cap about $70 billion.
• Gem — Cryptographic identity management, particularly for blockchain; private, valuation not disclosed.
• Radware — DDoS protection and application security; market cap approximately $1.4 billion.
• Sisense — BI with integrated security features; private, valuation around $1 billion.
• Zeitgold — Financial management for small businesses with security features; valuation not disclosed, primarily Europe-based.
• Adallom — Cloud security, now part of Microsoft (acquired for $320 million in 2015).
• Cybereason — Endpoint protection and XDR; valuation approximately $3 billion.
• Imperva — Data and application security; acquired by Thoma Bravo in 2018 for $2.1 billion.

And So Many More …

However simple these may seem as some odd cybersecurity firms to you but all these disruptive multi-million valuations backed security startups have a common link to them and their origins: The Unit 8200.

This is the Unit 8200 Mafia in the cybersecurity market, the names aforementioned are the one’s directly founded by the members of the force, imagine the scale of the impact in terms of the pipeline projects and the second tiered impact that would have been created; and now all this cumulatively justifies Netanyahu’s Vision of making Isarel a Global Superpower in cybersecurity.

Henceforth, Forbes rightly states that this unit is Israel’s Secret Startup Machine even beyond pure security firms. Forbes estimates that around 1000+ tech startups are founded by the 8200 alums, which some sources estimate constitutes around 80% of the total cybersecurity enterprises founded in Israel.

While none of these startups have diminished or are ignored by the markets as most of these were either acquired by large American corps for gigantic valuation either they themselves are on a bull run in the global markets.

Some Stunning Facts:

Wiz (founded January 2020) went from $1M ARR to $100M in 18 months, faster than any software company in history

In 1993, Check Point (NASDAQ: CHKP) produced the first successful commercialization of the firewall, selling an integrated hardware-and-software appliance security teams could use to protect their local area network (LAN) from external intrusion.

Noname Security ($40M ARR in 2023), Snyk ($147M revenue in 2022), CyberArk (NASDAQ: CYBR), Guardicore (acquired for $600M), Imperva (acquired for $3.6B), Orca Security ($50M ARR in 2023) and two dozen more.

When we start our spree towards understanding that what exactly is working so well for the Unit 8200 that it’s disrupting the cybersecurity market with that magnitude and technological innovation then there isn’t a single phrased answer to that as It’s the ecosystem and the strategic structure that implemented and is working so-well, probably the best amongst the entire world’s National Cybersecurity Programs.

Broadly there are 3 core reasons why Israel’s cybersecurity ecosystem especially the one created around Unit 8200 works out so well :

1. Catching them Young and Leveraging the Curiosity:

At Unit-8200 it all starts at 16 or 18 years of age, this is said to be the best time to getting your foundations right and think differently but in the correct direction, and this with the perfect technical knowledge would definitely bore fruits.

2. Fostering the Right Attitude:

Cultivating a sense and responsibility of giving back to the nation, midst Israel’s continuous conflicts the Unit perfectly channelizes the energy and patriotism into innovation and technical disruptions.

3. The Right Mix of Discipline, Leadership and Vision:

Discipline, Leadership and Vision are the cores for any entrepreneurial venture to succeed and achieve heights. While the most of the IDF especially Unit 8200 has these values ingrained into its members which hence post a valuable tenure of service to the nation pave a way forward towards taking up such technologically risking but envisioning ventures.

All-in-all Unit 8200 alongside Israel’s National Cyber Strategy serves as a perfect piece of inspiration and model for all entities , from aspiring nation states or even private ventures to make sure that how well-structured and strategy backed cybersecurity programs actually bear fruits and rather prove to be lethally innovative and disruptive for the entire market.

Hence the Unit 8200, alums-mafia and the ecosystem that cultivates and maintains this continues to be truly a super-force.

Written By: Nitish Deshpande

[nitishdeshpande07@gmail.com]