“Three Israeli defense contractors responsible for building the ‘Iron Dome’ missile shield ... were compromised by hackers and robbed of huge quantities of sensitive documents pertaining to the shield technology,” the report claims, citing analysis by US-military-linked threat intelligence firm Cyber Engineering Services Inc. (CyberESI), based near US spy agency NSA in a Maryland suburb near Washington.
According to the report, the hackers penetrated the systems of three top Israeli defense firms — Elisra Group, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems — between October 2011 and August 2012, according to CyberESI (although the initial phishing emails went out in April 2011).
The timing of the cyber intrusions is also consistent with this conclusion. The Iron Dome was first deployed in March 2011 and intercepted its first missile from Gaza a month later. That same month is when the first phishing emails were sent to the firms.
According to CyberESI, the attacks against the Israeli firms “bore all of the hallmarks of the ‘Comment Crew,’” a now-infamous cyber unit in China's People’s Liberation Army. The Comment Crew, which is officially designated PLA Unit 61398, first rose to public prominence when the Virginia-based cyber security firm Mandiant profiled it in a report it released in February of last year. The five PLA hackers whom the US officially charged with crimes this spring were also members of Unit 61398, which is based out of Shanghai.
Israel’s mobile, all-weather Iron Dome missile system targets missiles with ranges between 4-70 kilometers, although Israel is currently trying to expand that range. The batteries all have sophisticated radars that allow them to determine the destination of the intended target. The system is therefore able to ignore missiles that are headed towards open fields or unimportant sites.
If the FY2015 U.S. military budgets are approved, the US will have given the Zionist regime nearly $1 billion in funding for the Iron Dome system over the last five years. By contrast, Tel Aviv has invested nearly $600 million. According to Yair Ramati, the head of Israel’s Missile Defense Organization, the US has paid for seven of the eight Iron Dome batteries the regime currently deploys.
In contrast to the Iron Dome Missile System itself, the US and the Zionist regime jointly developed the Arrow 3 missile that was also targeted by the PLA hackers. The head of CyberESI told Krebs on Security, “Most of the technology in the Arrow 3 wasn’t designed by Israel, but by Boeing and other US defense contractors.”
NTJ/MB