The Battle for Your Computer

CHAPTER 7From Security to Defense—The Cyber “Iron Dome”

Lior Div was 18 years old when he was sent on one of the IDF's most top‐secret and cutting‐edge training programs. The year was 1996, and Lior was an exceptionally talented young man with an amazing knack for technology. “I used to do things like playing around with the new cellular networks in Israel, trying to ride them so I could eavesdrop on conversations,” he tells me. In the army, he had wanted to go to fighter pilot school (“I wanted to be the best of the best, and what's better than a fighter pilot?”), but medical reasons kept him out of this coveted course, and instead, he was sent to Unit 8200.

The unit was working on a new project, for which it was trying to find the most capable candidates in the country. Out of the 1,000 people who started the course, 500 survived the first stage, and of those, 400 dropped out in the next stage. By the end, only 20 special candidates were invited to join Unit 8200. Only the four candidates who displayed the best abilities got into the new course. Lior Div was one of them.

Div was a pioneer of cyberintelligence long before it had that name. He was sent to officers' school and then joined a very small clique of officers who were given the mission of understanding how exactly this new world of cybersecurity worked. Together, they worked on special projects for which he was awarded a citation by the chief of military intelligence and another prestigious prize.

After six years ...