Unit 8200 installation on Mount Avital

Unit 8200 (Hebrew: יחידה 8200‎, Yehida Shmoneh-Matayim) is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit responsible for collecting signal intelligence and code decryption. It also appears in military publications as the Central Collection Unit of the Intelligence Corps.

History[link]

Unit 8200 was established in 1952 using primitive surplus American military equipment. Originally, it was called the 2nd Intelligence Service Unit and then the 515th Intelligence Service Unit. In 1954, the unit moved from Jaffa to its current base at the Glilot junction.^[1]

Structure[link]

Unit 8200 is the largest unit in the Israel Defense Forces, comprising several thousand soldiers.^[2] It is comparable in its function to the United States' National Security Agency, except that it is not a separate civilian (i.e. Ministry of Defense) body. Unit 8200 is led by a Brigadier-General whose identity remains classified.

Subordinate to Unit 8200 is Unit Hatzav (Hebrew: יחידת חצב‎), responsible for collecting OSINT intelligence. The unit monitors and collects military intelligence-related information from television, radio, newspapers, and the internet. The translation of various items accounts for part of what is termed "basic intelligence," which is collected by the corps' units. According to media reports, the unit provides over half of the overall intelligence information for the Israeli Intelligence Community.^{[citation needed]}

The IDF's most important signal intelligence-gathering installation is the Urim SIGINT Base, a part of Unit 8200. Urim is located in the Negev desert approximately 30 km from Beersheba.”^[3]In March 2004, the Commission to investigate the intelligence network following the War in Iraq recommended turning the unit into a civilian National SIGINT Agency, as is in other Western countries, but this proposal was not implemented.

Alleged activities[link]

Ronen Bergman revealed in a 2009 book that a Hezbollah bomb, disguised as a cell phone, exploded at Unit 8200's headquarters in February 1999. Two officers were injured.^[4]

In 2010, the New York Times cited "a former member of the United States intelligence community" alleging that this unit used a secret kill switch to deactivate Syrian air defenses during Operation Orchard.^[5]

Unit 8200 worked in conjunction with the NSA to create the Stuxnet computer worm that in 2010 infected industrial computers, including Iranian nuclear facilities.^[6]

Alumni[link]

Alumni of 8200 have gone on to found leading Israeli IT companies, among them Check Point, ICQ, NICE, AudioCodes, Gilat, and EZchip.^[7]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Enter Unit 8200: Israel arms for cyberwar, UPI, 11 May 2011

Look up unit in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Unit may refer to:

Mathematics[link]

• Unit (ring theory), an element that is invertible with respect to ring multiplication
• 1 (number), the unit number
• Unit vector, a vector with length equal to 1

Science and technology[link]

• Units (software), a software program for unit conversion
• Units of measurement, a standardized quantity of measurement of a physical quantity
• Enzyme unit
• Unit operation, a basic step in a chemical plant process
• Functional unit, a component of a computer system such as the CPU
• Unit of blood, a measurement in blood transfusion equal to one pint or 450 ml
• Unit of alcohol, 10 millilitres of pure ethanol in the United Kingdom
• Rack unit, a measure to describe the height of rack-mounted computer equipment
• Geological unit or rock unit, a volume of identifiable rock or ice
• In statistics:
  • Unit of observation, a type of entity (e.g. person, house, neighborhood) specifying the level at which data is collected
  • Unit of analysis, a type of entity (e.g. person, house, neighborhood) specifying the level at which data is analyzed
  • Statistical unit, a single data point, or collection of data points grouped as a single entity, on which statistical analysis is performed

Entertainment and the arts[link]

• UNIT, a fictional military organization in the science fiction television series Doctor Who
• Unit (album), by the Australian band Regurgitator
• Unit (art collective), a British artists' collective
• G-Unit, a hip-hop music group
• The Units, a synthpunk band
• The Unit, an American television series
• Second unit, a team that shoots footage which is of lesser importance for the final motion picture
• Unit of action, a discrete piece of action (or beat) in a theatrical presentation
• UNIT Post Production, a British company
• The Tony Rice Unit, an American bluegrass group

Other uses[link]

• Unit (housing), a self-contained suite of rooms within a set of similar dwellings
• Unit of account, a monetary unit of measurement
• An apartment
• Multiple unit, a passenger train where each carriage has it own motors
• Military unit
• Strategic business unit
• In real time strategy games, an individual (or squad, depending on the game) infantry or vehicle
• Work unit or danwei (单位), a place of employment in China

See also[link]

• UNITA
• Subunit (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

8200 may refer to:

• The year 8200 CE.
• Unit 8200, the signal intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces.

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.