Gaby Portnoy, the director general of the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD), said in the meeting that cooperation to counter what he called Iranian cyber threats can pave the way for defining “Cyber Iron Dome” project to protect Tel Aviv's new allies against rivals’ cyberattacks.
“This is a historic meeting. A declaration of the parties regarding cooperation in the cyber field against common enemies,” Portnoy said.
He named his initiative “Cyber Iron Dome”, which is named after the much-vaunted Israeli air defense system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, and claimed that Tel Aviv is highly advanced when it comes to cyber security technologies. In late November, he organized a conference to showcase Israeli cyber security technology with the presence of 65 companies.
Creation of a new database and a holistic AI approach to analyze and integrate the real-time detection of threats across the country are components that will power this cyber defense, Portnoy went on.
At the same time, the Jerusalem Post newspaper claimed that the heads of cyber security from Oman and Kuwait were also present in this meeting and emphasized the importance of cyber unity. This claim is made while Oman parliament recently passed a law criminalizing any interaction with the Israeli regime.
Tel Aviv is striving to establish a cyber alliance with Arab monarchies while over the past three years, it reported several cyberattacks and hacking operations targeting its media and state institutions by such hacker groups as Moses Staff and Open Hands who managed to penetrate most sensitive security and military infrastructure and access top secret information. The Israeli regime, which is one of the highly security-minded regimes in the world and has substantial espionage activities in its record, is afraid of the disclosure of these documents by hacking groups, and therefore is trying to upgrade its cyber security in partnership with of Arab countries. It recently held the largest joint cyber exercise with the US in Georgia Cyber Center, but could not achieve acceptable results as sources familiar with the exercises said.
Activity of cyber system in four protective layers
The mechanism of performance of the new cyber defense program is compared to the Iron Dome missile defense system. The Cyber Iron Dome is meant to thwart attacks on various parts of Israeli computer networks, including personal, state, army, and private sector networks. This system will operate in four main layers: Identifying threats, protecting systems against threats, reducing threats in the network, and carrying out retaliatory attacks against cyber attackers. Also, any counterattack under this system will be carried out by the Cyber Defense Unit of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
“Unlike the Iron Dome, which detects incoming missiles for destruction, the cyber version does not attack its target first, but provides the Israeli military with detailed information about the source of the attacks,” head of the Israel National Committee for Commercial/Civilian Cyber R&D Daniel Gold said, adding: “The goal of the cyber defense network is to identify the threat in advance and prevent it from happening, and finally it can attack the hackers who tried to penetrate the network.”
According to Gold, there are about 200 cyber start-ups in the Israeli regime, but there is no state body to integrate them. A large company, he added, can decide to work with 10 small start-ups, each developing a specific component in a system, and as a result can deliver a larger, more integrated system. This is despite the fact that after the US, most of cyber security companies are based in the occupied territories. According to Israeli officials, the cyber defense program encourages internet and technology companies in the occupied territories and outside of them to cooperate with the government and army on this new project. Among the big companies mentioned as possible partners for this project are Google, IBM and Microsoft, as well as two major Israeli defense companies that have cyber security units.
According to Israeli officials, dozens of extinguished scientists, engineers, and industry people are partners to this project. This comes as the Haaretz has recently revealed that Tel Aviv has been having a big challenge of “cyber brain drain” as 30 percent of young officers in technological roles quit the army seduced by lucrative proposals by the start-ups and private sector, calling it a “ticking bomb within the IDF.” This is knocking the army out of the rivalry when it comes to benefits and salary to the young cyber brains.
Building influence in the Arab countries
The Israeli government intended to pave the way for its influence in the Persian Gulf Arab monarchies using the normalization process, but it could not achieve its goals through political means, and the Abraham Accords, which were widely propagated, did not bring any special benefits to the parties and only ended with the signing of a few security contracts. Now, Israel is increasing its intelligence presence in Arab countries through cyber technology and under the pretext of helping Arabs with protection of their infrastructure.
By penetrating Arab security layers, the Israelis can spy even better and cyber cooperation is one of the gates to the Arab world the Mossad officers are maneuvering on. Having in mind that the Persian Gulf monarchies do not have such technologies, they are trying to invest in the Israeli security technology systems to benefit from these achievements. Saudi Arabia, for example, has already invested $2 billion in Israeli economic infrastructure and modern technologies. Therefore, Tel Aviv will enter the Arab countries through this gate to pursue its spying goals.
Before that, the Israelis had struck deals with Arab countries for economic cooperation, tourism, and recently permission for Israeli flights to enter Arab airspace. The Cyber Iron Dome is slated to complete this chain. With such initiatives, Tel Aviv intends to make the normalization process more attractive to Arab countries so that more Arabs will be drawn to this path. Due to the Arab public anger with thaw process, it has become more difficult to take further political steps of normalization, and therefore, the Israelis are trying to overstate the scientific, economic, and military achievements of normalization in order to somehow smoothen the bumpy path of gaining foothold in the Arab world.
By proposing cooperation in the cyber defense, the Israelis are implying that they are leading in this technological area regionally and can assist their allies in the region and therefore take the compromising leaders further to their side. Israeli spies can settle in these countries and do espionage under the ruse of warding off cyber threats from Arab security networks and infrastructure. An Israeli tech company has already spied on some Arab leaders in the region with its Pegasus spyware. Indeed, this cyber project is the easiest and cheapest option helping Tel Aviv achieve its goals in the Arab world.
Countering Iranian power
The Israeli regime has planned to tighten the noose on Iran through a Western-sponsored regional alliance with the Arab states, but its ambitious initiative badly failed, making it try another path to implement its anti-Iranian plans. Therefore, one of the Cyber Iron Dome project’s objectives is to deter the so-called threats from Iran, the confrontation of which has a top priority in new Netanyahu government. Iran and its allies in the Axis of Resistance, which include Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Palestine, are honing their cyber capabilities along with military power. The majority of the cyberattacks targeting Israeli security and military infrastructure in recent years is Tehran-linked, Tel Aviv leaders claim.
The Israelis, adopting policy of death by a thousand cuts against Iran, spare no efforts to deal blows to Tehran, and cyber defense is one of these efforts that is expected to pick up the pace in the upcoming years. After the eruption of unrest in Iran in September, in which the attacks of hacker groups were part of a cyber war against Tehran and these hacker groups along with the Saudi-funded Iran International news network as their propaganda arm incited chaos and riots in the country, Israel is thought to plan continued anti-Iranian cyberattacks as part of broader future strategy against Tehran.
The Israelis have picked the name of Iron Dome for their
major cyber project to protect their information infrastructure while
their anti-missile air defense with the same name spoke eloquently about
its inefficiency in action by failing to intercept Palestinian rockets
in wars waged against Hamas, including the 11-day war in 2021. This
project is slated to meet its failure, too, because it is designed more
to infiltrate the Arab world intelligence and security layers and spy on
them than to upgrade Israeli cyber security infrastructure.
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