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Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA Listmaster
NRT-0625 Outgoing top Israeli information security officer provides perspectives:
Outgoing Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) information security chief Colonel Ram Dor recently gave an interview about Russian and Iranian intelligence threats, as well as his perspective on cyber threats and operations against Israel and, more recently, Georgia, according to an Israeli press report. Russia continues to pose a threat to Israel, according to a press report of the interview. "Russian intelligence ships have never stopped operating offshore IsraeL ... They regularly arrive at and depart from Syrian ports. In addition, Russian military intelligence has never stopped filling intelligence gathering centers they share with the Syrians in the Golan Heights and elsewhere. The equipment there is Russian," Dor asserted. Asked if, during the Second Lebanon War, intelligence information gathered by Russians passed on to Hizballah, Colonel Dor states, "The Syrians share intelligence they gather with Hizballah, and vice versa." "... So if the Russians help the Syrians obtain information, and the Syrians pass it on to Hizballah on a regular basis, information gathered by the Russians probably reaches Hizballah as well," he says.
Colonel Dor added that, "in parallel with Russian‑Syrian intelligence centers, Syrian‑Iranian centers also operate. Thus, the Syrians twice benefit: once from gleaning information about Israel through a Russian channel, and twice through an Iranian channel. Hizballah benefits from every direction, and so to regard today its intelligence as one of a guerilla organization would be a mistake. Hizballah enjoys superpower intelligence." In the Second Lebanon War, says Dor, we saw their efforts to act against us by attacking computerized systems through hackers. Dor emphasizes that he cannot prove with certainty that an Iranian state source was behind the hackers, but it is highly probable that is what happened.
Dor disclosed his perspective of the computer disruption operations against Georgia, saying, "In the Russians' war in Georgia, we saw a clear example of what future hacker wars in this sphere will look like. The Russians launched an exceptional attack on computerized systems in Georgia in the context of the war itself. This was done institutionally and with official state involvement by means of professional units trained for this."
"There's no forgetting that the Iranians are also a mathematical superpower, but currently, [Israel's) defense system is of a type that cannot be penetrated into sites with highly classified military information. We had expected them to try. When we started working and living in cyberspace, we realized we were exposed, and ... we prepared defenses. There is a national body that deals with this matter, and within my system, there is a body that deals with threat analysis and defense policy recommendations," he explained.
Asked whether the IDF employs its own hackers to study enemy hackers, Dor replied, "I wouldn't call them hackers. I would call my men professionals in the computer field who also excel in conspiratorial thinking. They have an ability to analyze the behavior of the other side's hacker. .in short: amazing people."
[20Sep08]
Last Modified: Friday, 10-Oct-2008 12:58:15 EDT
