Tal Shahaf
Alongside the bombings, assassinations and ground operations, another war is taking place between the two main constituents of the Axis of Evil and Israel—and it is sophisticated, cruel and no less dangerous. A secret operations center located in the Shin Bet headquarters called "HaOrgan" is leading these covert battles.
Hacker groups such as Lebanese Cedar and Handala are targeting essential infrastructures in Israel, collecting sensitive confidential information or hacking into the computers of the National Security Ministry and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Facebook account, and this is just the beginning.
This is what the battlefield looks like where the weapon is a keyboard and the ammunition is code lines, while the goal being the same: to hit as much as possible and to get hit as little as possible
Inside the Shin Bet headquarters in northern Tel Aviv, operates one of the least known and most significant operations centers responsible for Israel's security. It is called "HaOrgan," and for the past year, it has been waging a separate, covert war only known to a few, namely, Israel's cyber warfare against Hezbollah and Iran.
Around the table at HaOrgan gather representatives of the Shin Bet, Mossad, the IDF, the Military Intelligence Directorate, the Defense Ministry and the Israel National Cyber Directorate. Before the war, HaOrgan would meet once a week for an evaluation session. Over the course of the war, it operated continuously 24/7 and conducted like the pit at the Defense Ministry headquarters: the screens display a picture of the current cyber warfare and provide reports from both civil and military officials about online attacks, as well as intelligence about planned attacks.
The cyber experts at HaOrgan categorize them according to their degree of severity: starting from non-threatening attacks, through manipulations and attempts to recruit spies and agents, to cyber attacks that could pose a real threat to the State of Israel, targeting essential infrastructure such as power plants, water and communication systems or attempts to hack into sensitive confidential databases.
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