Israel taps teens to become 'interceptors' in cyberwarfare
New training program to create youth hacking force
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Israel has launched a new nationwide program aimed at training teenagers to carry out cyberwarfare operations.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the program at the Ashkelon Academic College, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu described the students who will receive the training as "future interceptors for the State of Israel," The Jerusalem Post reports.
"Israel's vital systems are under attack from Iran and other elements. This will only increase as we enter the digital age," Netanyahu said, adding that the cyberwarfare program is an effort to build a "digital Iron Dome" around the country.
The latter comment was a reference to the so-called Iron Dome, Israel's anti-missile defense system, which is widely believed to be the most effective such system in the world.
The new cyberwarfare education program will enroll outstanding students aged 16-18, and will take three years to complete.
The initiative comes as Israeli websites and databases have increasingly fallen victim to politically motivated attacks by Anonymous and other groups in recent months.
It was not immediately clear, however, whether the training dispensed under the new program will be purely defensive in nature. Israel is believed to already possess a mature cyberwarfare capability, and Israeli intelligence has been implicated in a number of high-profile attacks.
Most notably, Iran has accused Israel, the UK, and the US of conducting a sustained campaign of cyber-attacks designed to hobble Iran's controversial nuclear program, which it says included development of the infamous Stuxnet and Flame malware.
The use of such attacks is itself highly controversial, with critics questioning the ethics of destroying civilian infrastructure in the absence of an actual war.
Most security experts agree, however, that as long as the technology to conduct cyberwarfare exists, attacks are inevitable, and that developing a defensive capability that is effective against both civilian and state-sponsored attacks is therefore essential.
In November, The Washington Post reported that US President Barack Obama had signed a new, secret directive outlining when and how US forces can conduct defensive and offensive cyberwarfare, and other governments worldwide are believed to be drafting similar plans. ®
COMMENTS
Can't see what could possibly go wrong with training a whole group of religiously motivated youths to conduct aggressive acts against other countries.
Proof by google hit
Invisible pink unicorn - About 295,000 results
Table with wobbly leg wedged up with a bit of cardboard - About 214,000 results
Therefore there are MORE Invisible Pink Unicorns in the world that tables with wobbly legs wedged up with a bit of cardboard.
Watching Hollywood movies much?
Somehow I doubt that what the worlds is needs a bunch of leet, ideologically motivated haxxxor teens.
Oh well.
As for the Iron Dome, the only thing that can be said is DERP:
Even experts who believe Iron Dome performed impressively question whether it could cope with a better-armed adversary capable of firing missiles from military launchers, not holes in the ground and cobbled-together launchers in the backs of trucks as is the case in Gaza.
Most of the rockets fired from Gaza are crude, relatively slow and cost only a few hundred dollars. “The rockets being launched [by Hamas] are pretty substandard munitions,” said George Stejic, president of Tesla Laboratories, Inc., which has commissioned an investigation into Iron Dome’s effectiveness. “Israel has every reason to overexaggerate the efficiency of Dome, just as we did with Patriots during Desert Storm,” he said.
Richard Lloyd, the missile-system expert conducting the investigation for Tesla, said his preliminary findings echoed Prof. Postol’s doubts. There are few demonstrable examples of incoming rockets intercepted by Iron Dome and showing the sort of telltale damage that would be obvious if they have been blasted by the spray of rod-like pellets from an Iron Dome’s warhead, he said.
So what's the cost of this theater?
The sting is that one of the Palestinian rockets costs only a few hundred shekels, while one Iron Dome missile costs 315,000 shekels. During the four days [in March 2012], 17.6 million shekels’ worth of missiles was spent by the Israeli side. This is apart from the very high price tag of the batteries themselves.
It's good that the US is paying.
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