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Cyber Warfare tactics increasingly used in Iran conflict

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+ Special Series Middle East conflict Conflict in the Middle East has been escalating.
− Fresh Air Wild Card with Rachel Martin It's Been a Minute Planet Money Get NPR+ More Podcasts & Shows Search Newsletters NPR Shop The Best Music of 2025 All Songs Considered Tiny Desk Music Features Live Sessions About NPR Diversity Support Careers Press Ethics Cyber warfare tactics increasingly used in Iran conflict Cyber warfare is coming out of the shadows in the Iran war, from hacking phone apps to recruiting agents online to embracing AI as a weapon.
+ These stories provide context for current developments and the history that led up to them. Daniel Estrin Plumes of smoke from a U.S.-Israeli strike on an oil facility late Saturday linger and merge with the cloudy sky over Tehran, Iran, Sunday.
− Middle East Cyber warfare tactics increasingly used in Iran conflict March 10, 20264:04 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Daniel Estrin Cyber Warfare tactics increasingly used in Iran conflict Listen &middot; 3:53 3:53 Transcript Toggle more options Download Embed Embed "> <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/nx-s1-5741726/nx-s1-9681301" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Transcript Cyber warfare is coming out of the shadows in the Iran war, from hacking phone apps to recruiting agents online to embracing AI as a weapon.
+ Vahid Salemi/AP hide caption TEL AVIV, Israel — In the nighttime hours before launching the Iran war, Israeli military generals made sure their cars were not in their usual parking spots at military headquarters in Tel Aviv, in case Iranian spotters were looking for clues that war was near. In the days before the war, U.S.
− Sponsor Message LEILA FADEL, HOST: Cyber warfare is coming out of the shadows in the Iran war.
+ warplanes were deliberately parked in southern Israel to distract Iran — which was perhaps keeping a close eye with Chinese satellite imagery — as Israel prepared its own fighter jets to take off from an entirely different location, the Ramat David base in northern Israel. These were some of the "white noise" tactics deployed as Israel and the U.S.
− The U.S., Israel and Iran are spying, hacking and trying to deceive each other.
+ launched the war against Iran, a senior Israeli defense official from the military's operations directorate told NPR.
− NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv has this report.
+ The official spoke on condition of anonymity to divulge some of Israel's shadowy tactics.
− DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: The U.S.
+ "What usually you are doing is try to influence the thinking of the rival entity to let them think that the moment is not coming soon," said Col.
− military's very first move in the Iran war was in cyberspace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine told reporters.
+ (Res) Doron Hadar, who helped lead influence operations and psychological warfare for the Israeli military until recently.
− (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) DAN CAINE: Coordinated space and cyber operations effectively disrupted communications and sensor networks across the area of responsibility, leaving the adversary without the ability to see, coordinate or respond effectively.
+ The Iran war is being fought on a hybrid digital-physical battlefield, with old-school deception tactics and cutting-edge AI technology, officials and analysts say.
− ESTRIN: Israel hacked Tehran's traffic cameras to track the Iranian supreme leader's moves before killing him.
+ The U.S.
− That's according to a senior Israeli defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Israel's cyber methods.
+ military's very first move in the Iran war was in cyberspace. "Coordinated space and cyber operations effectively disrupted communications and sensor networks across the area of responsibility, leaving the adversary without the ability to see, coordinate, or respond effectively," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.
− As the Financial Times reported, Israel synthesized that footage and billions of data points to create a bank of targets in Iran.
+ Dan Caine told reporters. Israel's warplanes, sent to target Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, located him thanks to Israel's hacking of traffic cameras in the Iranian capital, the senior Israeli defense official said. As the Financial Times reported, Israel synthesized that traffic footage and billions of data points to create a bank of targets in Iran.
− NPR has not independently confirmed that. Omer Benjakob is a cybersecurity reporter for the Israeli paper Haaretz.
+ NPR has not independently confirmed that reporting.
− OMER BENJAKOB: Israel used or very likely used very cutting-edge kind of data processing or big data fusion techniques that from a kind of layman or citizen perspective you would call AI.
+ "Israel used, or very likely used, very cutting edge kind of data processing or big data fusion techniques that from a kind of layman or citizen perspective you would call AI," said Omer Benjakob, a cybersecurity reporter for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
− ESTRIN: He believes Israel's military is developing its own independent AI systems to avoid the kind of clash happening now with the Trump administration, as the company Anthropic has tried to limit how the U.S.
+ Israel is likely much farther along than the U.S.
− military uses its AI model, Claude, during war.
+ is in developing its own independent AI systems for military use, he said, to avoid the kind of clash the Trump administration has had with the AI company Anthropic over military use of the company's AI model Claude.
− BENJAKOB: We need to, at least at some level, to be able to do some of this stuff independently because one day someone will discover we also use Claude.
+ "We need to at least at some level to be able to do some of this stuff independently," Benjakob said, referring to Israel's military.
− And then there will be a protest in San Francisco.
+ "One day someone will discover we also use Claude, and then there'll be a protest in San Francisco, and then they'll take Claude away from us.
− And then they'll take Claude away from us. So we might as well just have our own version of Claude.
+ So we might as well just have our own version of Claude." Iran has recruited dozens of Israeli nationals through the Telegram messaging app in the last couple years, most of whom were paid to stir up strife in Israeli society, like to start random fires or write antigovernment graffiti, Israeli authorities say.
− ESTRIN: Then there's psychological cyber warfare.
+ Benjakob believes Iran also recruited Israelis to threaten him and his wife, after he reported on fake social media accounts in Israel that were suspected to be an Iranian campaign. "My wife got to her office a package with, like, a Jewish memorial candle, and I got some message, like, via WhatsApp, telling me that if I don't stop what I'm doing, my wife will have to use this candle," Benjakob said.
− Israeli authorities say Iran has recruited dozens of Israeli nationals over the Telegram messaging app in the last couple of years.
+ "So what we're seeing in Israel a lot is just people being tapped to kind of continue Iran's digital war against Israel in physical means." Former FBI cyber deputy director Cynthia Kaiser, now with the Halcyon Ransomware Research Center, warns Iran may seek to retaliate against the U.S.
− Most of them paid to stir up strife in Israeli society, like to start random fires or write anti-government graffiti.
+ by targeting U.S.
− Benjakob the journalist believes Iran recruited Israelis to threaten him after he reported on fake social media accounts Iran was running in Israel.
+ hospitals' systems with ransomware, as it has done in the past. She has also detected what appears to be Iranian-sponsored efforts to gather data on Iranian nationals.
− BENJAKOB: My wife got to her office a package with, like, a Jewish memorial candle.
+ "We have seen some activity that's consistent with espionage type activities at organizations that might have rich data on people in the region.
− And I got some message, like, via WhatsApp telling me that if I don't stop what I'm doing, my wife will have to use this candle. So what we're seeing in Israel a lot is just people being tapped to kind of continue Iran's digital war against Israel in physical means.
+ We assess that's likely for targeting of people that the regime believes are dissidents," Kaiser said.
− ESTRIN: Israel does psychological cyber warfare, too.
+ Israel conducts psychological cyberwarfare too. At the start of the war, Israel hacked a popular Muslim prayer app in Iran to send messages to Iranian soldiers urging them to defect, the senior Israeli official said.
− The senior official who spoke with NPR said Israel hacked a popular Muslim prayer app in Iran at the start of the war and sent messages calling on soldiers to defect. He said, after Israel bombed the notorious Evin prison in Iran last year, Israel sent videos of that bombing to Iranian officials to intimidate them. Israel also tried to trick Iran before launching the current war. Former military official Doron Hadar was a part of Israel's influence operations until recently.
+ The Wall Street Journal first reported on the hacking.
− DORON HADAR: What usually you are doing is try to influence the thinking of the rival entity to let him think that the moment is not coming soon.
+ Last year, after Israel bombed Iran's notorious Evin prison in Tehran, Israel sent videos of that bombing to Iranian officials to intimidate them, the Israeli official said.
− ESTRIN: So white noise tactics were deployed against Iran, the current defense official told NPR.
+ "The message was, you aren't as strong as you think," the official said. In a report published by digital rights group Citizen Lab, researchers say they found evidence suggesting Israel ran a disinformation campaign seeking to foment an Iranian revolt against the regime, by using AI-generated images of the prison bombing spread by false Twitter accounts.
− He said U.S. war planes were parked in southern Israel to distract from the covert Air Force attack that was being prepared from northern Israel. And the night the war was launched, he said, Israeli army generals didn't park their cars in their normal parking spaces at military headquarters, old-school deception in a high-tech war.
+ The Israeli official denied the allegation.
− Daniel Estrin NPR News Tel Aviv.
+ " This is exactly the sort of thing that Israel does," said Darren Linvill, a disinformation researcher at Clemson University who co-authored the report.
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+ "They integrate psychological operations with their military operations in one clean campaign with a single goal, which is toppling the Iranian regime." Sponsor Message Become an NPR sponsor