Days before Iran’s attack with more than 300 drones and missiles on Israel last month, Tel Aviv’s cyber defense chief, Gaby Portnoy, warned the world that the conflict was also gaining momentum in cyberspace.
According to the annual report of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, in the first three months after the Hamas-led massacre, the number of cyber attacks against the country was 2.5 times higher than in previous years, with a total of 3,380 incidents recorded. many of them associated with Tehran and its sponsors, such as the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
During this period, around 800 hacking attacks were classified as having “significant potential for harm”, according to the document. Targets included government organizations, military and civilian infrastructure.
“The intensity of the attack is greater than ever, with Iranian and Hezbollah groups cooperating to attack Israel across all sectors,” Portnoy said at the time.
Weeks before the Tehran attack, a group of hackers linked to the Persian country claimed to have compromised Israeli radar systems, although Tel Aviv’s cyber defense agency denied such action by stating that no “abnormal activity” was noticed in those days. .
Despite Israel being recognized as being developed in this sector, some of the attacks in recent months could not be thwarted, such as episodes against hospitals in the cities of Haifa and Safed, where patient data was stolen. One of the cases was linked to the Hezbollah support group, Lebanese Cedar.
Faced with the growth of the Iranian threat in cyberspace, Israel has invested in a “cyber summit”, an environment where strategies are improved to combat Iranian hacking activity and anticipate possible “aggressions” in the technological area.
In an interview with the American magazine Foreign Policy, Mohammed Soliman, director of the strategic technologies and cybersecurity program at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, stated that the war in cyberspace between the two countries is considered the “oldest rivalry in the world” in this sense.
According to the expert, Israel has more technological capacity in this dispute for support from the United States, while Iran can be classified as a “rising cyber power.” The Persian country also receives support from powers such as Russia and China.
“Iran is not really equivalent to Israel in cyberspace, but it is a very agile nation in terms of building its own capabilities and has also been learning from the Israelis all these years,” Soliman said.
Researcher Chuck Freilich, from the Institute for National Security Studies, affiliated with Tel Aviv University, explained in an interview with the network France 24 that, in addition to targeting the sabotage of infrastructure in Israel, Iran also focuses its attacks on “gathering data for intelligence and spreading false information for propaganda purposes.”
Freilich points out that assistance from Russia and China in this enhancement is essential to Tehran’s success, as is Iranian universities’ growing emphasis on cyber training for students and soldiers.