According to informed sources, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has been using some low-tech strategies to try to evade its foe’s sophisticated surveillance technology following the deaths of senior commanders in targeted Israeli airstrikes.
It has also been studying and attacking Israel’s intelligence gathering capabilities using its own technology, drones, in what the leader of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, has referred to as a strategy of “blinding” Israel.
Since Hamas, Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally in the Gaza Strip, went to war with Israel in October, the two sides have exchanged fire. Despite the fact that fighting on the southern border of Lebanon has remained relatively contained, intensified attacks in recent weeks have heightened fears that it could escalate into a full-scale war.
A huge number of individuals have escaped the two sides of the line. Israeli strikes have killed in excess of 330 Hezbollah contenders and around 90 regular citizens in Lebanon, as per Reuters counts. Israel claims that 21 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed in attacks from Lebanon.
Participating in the near-daily hostilities, which included launching rockets and explosive drones into northern Israel, resulted in the deaths of many Hezbollah members. In addition, Hezbollah has confirmed the deaths of more than 20 operatives in targeted strikes away from the frontlines, including three top commanders, members of its elite Radwan special forces unit, and intelligence agents.
Israel’s military said it was answering an unwarranted assault from Hezbollah, which started terminating at Israeli focuses on the day after Hamas went after Israel on Oct. 7. The Israel Protection Powers (IDF) said in a proclamation to Reuters that they were striking military targets and taking “possible safeguards to relieve damage to regular citizens.”
The statement stated that “the IDF’s ability to gather comprehensive and precise intelligence on Hezbollah’s forces, its leaders, the organization’s terrorist infrastructure, their whereabouts, and operations is the linchpin of the success of these efforts.”
“Reasons of intelligence security” excused the IDF from responding to questions about its intelligence gathering and Hezbollah’s countermeasures. The IDF has emphasized its capability to strike Hezbollah operatives across the border as domestic pressure builds in Israel over the group’s barrages. 320 “terrorists,” including senior operatives, had been killed as of May 29, according to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a tour of Israel’s Northern Command. He pointed to pictures of what he claimed to be slain Hezbollah commanders.
These attacks rely heavily on technology for electronic surveillance. The IDF has stated that it regularly sends surveillance drones over the border to spy on its adversary and that it has security cameras and remote sensing systems trained on areas where Hezbollah operates. Israel’s electronic eavesdropping, which includes hacking into computers and cell phones, is also widely regarded as one of the most advanced in the world. Six people who are familiar with Hezbollah’s operations and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters told Reuters that the organization has adapted its strategies in response to its losses. According to two of the sources, pagers and couriers who deliver verbal messages in person, as well as cell phones, which can be used to track a user’s location, have been banned from the battlefield.
Hezbollah has likewise been utilizing a private, fixed-line media communications network tracing all the way back to the mid 2000s, three sources said. On the off chance that discussions are caught wind of, code words are utilized for weapons and meeting locales, as indicated by one more source acquainted with the gathering’s planned operations. These are refreshed almost everyday and conveyed to units by means of dispatches, the source said. Qassem Kassir, a Lebanese analyst who is associated with Hezbollah, stated, “We’re facing a battle in which information and technology are essential parts.”
“However, when you face certain technological advances, you must return to the old methods—phones, in-person communications, whatever method allows you to circumvent the technology.” The media office of Hezbollah stated that it had no response to the sources’ claims. MEASURES WITHOUT TECHNIQUES Against high-tech spying, security experts say that some low-tech countermeasures can be quite effective. Osama bin Laden, the late leader of al Qaeda, used couriers rather than the internet and other phone services to avoid capture for nearly a decade. Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst who works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, stated, “The simple act of using a VPN (virtual private network), or better yet, not using a cell phone at all, can make it much harder to find and fix a target.” “However, these countermeasures also significantly reduce the leadership of Hezbollah’s ability to communicate rapidly with their troops.”
Local informants, according to officials from Hezbollah and Lebanese security, have also been tapped, according to Hezbollah. Lebanon’s monetary emergency and contentions between political groups have set out open doors for Israeli enrollment specialists, yet not all witnesses acknowledge who they are talking with, three sources said.
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident, on Nov. 22, a woman from south Lebanon received a call on her cell phone from a person claiming to be a local official. According to the sources, the caller inquired about the family’s whereabouts in flawless Arabic.
The woman responded with “no,” stating that they had traveled to eastern Lebanon. Five Hezbollah fighters, including Abbas Raad, the son of a senior Hezbollah lawmaker and a Radwan member, were killed when a missile struck the woman’s home in the village of Beit Yahoun, according to sources. Without providing any additional information, Hezbollah told Reuters that it believes Israel had preceded the launch of the strike by tracking the fighters to the location and making a call to determine whether civilians were present. At the time, the Israeli military claimed that it had struck a “terrorist cell” and several other Hezbollah targets that day.
Within a matter of weeks, Hezbollah’s affiliated Al-Nour radio station issued a public warning to its supporters not to trust cold callers posing as local officials or aid workers, claiming that Israelis were impersonating them in order to identify Hezbollah-occupied homes. It was the first of a series of attacks in Lebanon on important Hezbollah members.
Wissam al-Tawil, Taleb Abdallah, and Mohammed Nasser, commanders who were in charge of Hezbollah’s operations in the south, were among the others killed. Saleh al-Arouri, representative head of Hamas, was likewise killed while going to a gathering in the capital, Beirut.
According to two sources familiar with the group’s thinking and a Lebanese intelligence official, Hezbollah began to suspect Israel was targeting its fighters by monitoring the video feeds from security cameras installed on buildings in border communities and tracking their cell phones.
On Dec. 28, Hezbollah encouraged southern occupants in an explanation circulated by means of its Wire channel to disengage any surveillance cameras they own from the web. Another instruction was given to Hezbollah fighters at the beginning of February: keep your phones away from the battlefield. A senior Lebanese source who is familiar with the activities of the organization stated, “Today, if anyone is found with their phone on the front, he is kicked out of Hezbollah.”
The order was confirmed by three more sources. One fighter told Reuters that during operations, they started leaving their phones behind. Another, a Lebanese intelligence official, stated that Hezbollah occasionally carried out surprise phone checks on field units.
According to two additional sources, senior Hezbollah politicians do not bring their phones to meetings, even in Beirut. On February, in a televised speech, 13, Nasrallah advised supporters to break, bury, or lock their phones in an iron box because they were more dangerous than Israeli spies. A former Lebanese security official and two other people familiar with Hezbollah’s operations claim that after Israel’s alleged breach, Hezbollah has also taken steps to protect its private telephone network.
The huge organization, purportedly funded by Iran, was set up something like twenty years prior with fiber optic links reaching out from Hezbollah’s fortifications in Beirut’s southern rural areas to towns in south Lebanon and east into the Bekaa Valley, as per government authorities at that point. The sources refused to specify the time or method of penetration. In any case, they said Hezbollah broadcast communications experts were breaking it into more modest organizations to restrict the harm assuming it is penetrated once more.
The senior source told Reuters, “We frequently change our landline networks and switch them up, so that we can outrun the hacking and infiltration.” DRONE Reconnaissance The gathering has additionally been promoting its capacity to gather its own knowledge on adversary targets and assault Israel’s observation establishments utilizing its weapons store of little, natively constructed, automated aeronautical vehicles (UAVs). On June 18, Hezbollah distributed a nine-minute selection of what it said was video accumulated by its observation airplane over the Israeli city of Haifa, including army bases and port offices.
The drone was said to have been detected by air defense systems, but the Israeli Air Force decided not to intercept it because it lacked offensive capabilities and could put residents in danger. Another video that Hezbollah put out included aerial shots that it claimed it had taken the day before the massive Israeli observation balloon known as Sky Dew was hit by a drone on May 15. Reuters was unable to confirm the images’ authenticity. However, at the time, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari stated that the airship, which was used to detect incoming rockets, had been hit while it was on the ground at a military base in the north of Israel.
He claimed that the military’s “aerial situational awareness capability” in the region was unaffected and that there were no casualties. Hezbollah says it has likewise destroyed or assumed command over about six Israeli observation drones, including Hermes 450, Hermes 900 and SkyLark UAVs.
Two of the sources claim that Hezbollah agents disassemble the drones to examine their components. Five Israeli air force drones were shot down by surface-to-air missiles while flying over Lebanon, according to Israel. The IDF, on the other hand, stated that Hezbollah’s declarations “should be noted with reservation” and that the organization aims to frighten Israelis. Hezbollah’s “awareness and wariness” of security breaches was at an all-time high, according to Nicholas Blanford, a security consultant based in Beirut who has written a history of the organization.
He stated to Reuters that “Hezbollah has had to tighten up its security far more than it needed to do in earlier conflicts.” However, Israel maintains a technological advantage, according to Blanford. Witnesses reported that on July 3, a car traveling through a Lebanese coastal village more than 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the Israeli border caught fire.
The Israeli military said it had killed Nasser, who it said told a unit that is going after Israel from southwestern Lebanon. He passed away less than a month after Abdallah was killed in a strike. He was in charge of operations in the southern border strip’s central region. In response to both killings, Hezbollah launched some of its largest barrages yet into northern Israel.
