Iran wartime cyber operations were wide enough to potentially reach every single Israeli citizen during the 12-day war in June, the head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate Yossi Karadi said at a university forum on Tuesday.
Karadi told the Cyber Week 2025 conference at Tel Aviv University that Tehran launched 1,200 separate information campaigns including text messages and social media posts during the conflict, each targeting thousands of Israelis simultaneously.
“Iran tried to reach every citizen in Israel – and not just once,” Karadi said. “They had hacked into parking and other road cameras to track the movements of Israeli VIPs, with the aim of building operations to target and harm them.”
The extent of the cyber war between Iran and Israel during the June conflict has not been fully detailed by the Mideast arch-foes, which both claimed vast successes in the cyber arena.
“When the Weizmann Institute was hit by a missile, the attack did not start there. A short time before, the attacker sent threatening emails to faculty members. At the same time, they took control of a street camera overseeing the building that had just been bombed,” Karadi said.
The Weizmann Institute of Science, located in Rehovot, is one of Israel’s most prominent research institutions and is known for its pioneering work in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and computer science.
“In addition, they published leaked data to deepen fear. This is another example showing that enemies today do not differentiate between physical attacks and cyberattacks,” he added.
An outlet tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards disclosed in September that a Ministry of Intelligence documentary used archival images from the internet, despite presenting them as exclusive material obtained from Israel.
Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib appeared in the program, calling the operation “a major infiltration” that yielded “a treasure of top-secret intelligence.” He described the outcome as the result of “months of complex planning and multiple successful operational phases inside the enemy’s structure.”
“On the last Yom Kippur, the attack on Shamir Medical Center was halted. At first it looked like classic ransomware. The Chilean ransomware group claimed they had stolen sensitive data. But after a short time, the ransom demand vanished because it became clear the real actor was Iran, using them as a front and trading on their tools,” Karadi continued. “It is a clear example of how some nation-states hide behind ransomware groups.”
Karadi said Israeli defenses prevented widespread damage, though he declined to give details or the full extent of the breaches.
A US cyber-security official attending the conference named Iran as among the most serious cyber threats to the United States.
“Russia, Iran, and North Korea are also major cyber threats, but China is the greatest,” Nick Andersen, executive assistant director for the Cybersecurity Division of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said.
“China is trying to use cyber weapons to pre-position the United States and the West for societal havoc and chaos in civilian infrastructure in the event of a conflict,” he added.
