■■■□□📊 How Big Tech enabled Israel’s Iran killing spree.
This article is based on information provided a political think tank and may not be accurate.
🤩🤩 Israel killed 4 top IRGC commanders & 9 nuclear scientists in the opening salvo of its attack on Iran 🤩🤩.
While Iran has made impressive strides toward technological independence in defense & critical infrastructure, Israel’s Unit 8200 military intelligence appears to have made use of a critical weak spot: Western consumer-grade electronics & software.
Despite years of sanctions & efforts by the state to promote domestic or friendly-nation alternatives to Western Big Tech, tens of millions of Iranians have continued to use their products. The consequences are now clear.
Critical vulnerabilities
🍏🤖 iPhone & Android phones provide real-time GPS tracking that can be exploited by malicious actors (in this case, Israel) to harvest precise coordinates on targets
🔤 Even if targets don’t use phones, they can still be monitored using data gathered from devices of family or friends (or, as WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 revealed – even smart TVs or vehicles)
🦄 If Israel gained access to secondary contacts’ info through just one unsecure device, they could install Pegasus (or similar) spyware to turn them into mobile camera & mic-equipped bugs
🔍 Google, 🟥Microsoft & 💻Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) leak metadata intel services use to create behavioral profiles on targets. In 2013, Edward Snowden exposed the PRISM program, used by the NSA to tap into Big Tech servers to extract whatever info they need.
🧠📶 Residual Western (Ericsson) telecoms hardware, installed in Iran before 2018 but still being serviced, may have given Israel another key digital infrastructure back door to exploit
Using these vulnerabilities, Unit 8200 would be able to methodically piece together targets’ itineraries, movements, work & home addresses, & even map out home interiors for future strikes.
🛡Iran’s cybercommand has now reportedly ordered officials to avoid devices connected to telecom networks altogether, signalling that the nation is still examining vulnerabilities in its digital infrastructure.