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When Dr. Harel Menashri encouraged the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) to take computers seriously in the 1990s, the agency, which was built around Arabic-speaking case officers, dismissed the concept as “mumbo jumbo,” he said in an interview with Jerusalem Post senior military analyst Yonah Jeremy Bob.
Menashri, a founder of the Shin Bet’s cybersecurity arm, spent 25 years in the service and now heads the cyber program at the Holon Institute of Technology.
He said he had changed officials’ minds with a “tiny Trojan” downloaded from the Internet to demonstrate that it could have caused Hiroshima-scale damage, killing nearly everyone in the Haifa Bay area.
Three decades later, his warnings have only grown more urgent.
Malicious code can manipulate SCADA sensors to kill
Menashri explained how malicious code can kill by manipulating Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) sensors.
SCADA is a system of software and hardware that allows industries to monitor and control utilities and industrial equipment from a central location.
By manipulating SCADA, malicious code can alter the pressure in a gas pipeline and cause an explosion. By hijacking railway signaling, it can derail a freight train carrying chemicals in central Tel Aviv.
Iran has world-class capabilities for weaponizing known vulnerabilities within hours, long before anyone installs a patch, which is a software update designed to fix a security vulnerability or flaw, Menashri said.
Artificial intelligence has shortened that timeline even further, with models now capable of carrying out intrusions from beginning to end, he said. Cyberspace still has no binding international law, and one word is deliberately missing from the debate: ethics, he added.
Menashri directed his sharpest criticism at Jerusalem, arguing that “China is not Israel’s friend.”
Chinese companies are legally required to provide the government with data and source code, while Chinese vehicles used by hundreds of Israeli defense officials may transmit information to China, he warned.
The Haifa Port dispute reflected similar concerns. The US opposed a Chinese company operating the new terminal because of its proximity to sensitive naval facilities.
According to Menashri, interventions by US President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton and former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo were needed to bring the issue to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attention.
An oversight body established afterward remains riddled with loopholes, Menashri said.
Officials who raised the alarm were told the issue was economic rather than related to security, and they were shown the door, he said.
This article is part of a special cyber installment with Yonah Jeremy Bob. See the previous episode here.