Israel: Military Intelligence Unit 8200 and Cyberwarfare

Israel's highly secretive Unit 8200 of Military Intelligence is increasingly seen to have played a leading role with the United States in developing a powerful new cyberweapon known as W32.Flame that attacked Iran's oil industry in April.

Veterans of the unit, the equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, have in recent years been at the cutting edge of building Israel's formidable high-tech sector into what the Financial Times calls a "global technology powerhouse."

Indeed, the proliferation of Unit 8200 alumni across the spectrum of Israel's high-tech industry suggests that they probably run it and that there are strong security links between the unit and civilian high-tech outfits.