Israeli military cyber chief warns of unprecedented cyber threats against Israel and the US

Israeli military cyber chief Maj. Gen. Aviad Dagan warned on Tuesday that both Israel and the United States face unprecedented cyber threats of which the public is largely unaware.

"We cannot mislead ourselves into thinking that, because Israel has been strong in cyber defense to date, the country can sit on its laurels," Dagan warned.

“We are obligated to protect national security. Along with our partners, we are developing projects and systems which will do exactly that,” he continued.

The Israeli military’s top cyber official emphasized the strong security cooperation between Israel and the United States in preventing cyber-attacks on the free world from hostile countries such as China, Iran and Russia.  

“Behind every overt campaign, there is also a covert one. We operate together with United States Cyber Command tirelessly to ensure superiority against any threat, from any direction,” Dagan explained. 

“The events published thus far do not fully represent the cyberthreat. We must not make a mistake. This is an issue that is at the very heart of our national security,” he assessed. 

The Israeli military’s cyber chief described the U.S. as “our partners” and noted the close cooperation between Israeli cyber security experts and their American counterparts from the U.S. Cyber Command’s Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber unit. 

The Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025, which was published in October, ranked the United States, United Kingdom and Israel as the three most targeted countries in the world in terms of cyberattack volume.

The Jewish state registered over 600 cyberattacks during the period covered in the report. It constituted 20.4% of all cyberattacks in the entire Middle East and North Africa regions. Some 3.5% of all global cyberattacks hit Israel. By comparison, 5.6% of the attacks were directed against the United Kingdom and 24.8% targeted the United States. 

While all three countries face serious cyberattacks, the source of the threat differs. The majority of the attacks against the United States are linked to China. Russia reportedly focuses its cyber warfare against the United Kingdom, which has publicly positioned itself as a leading Western supporter of Ukraine against Moscow. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic of Iran and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah have mainly focused on targeting Israel.

The ayatollah regime reportedly stepped up its cyberattacks against Israel following the Tehran-backed Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

“As the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, 2023, Iran immediately surged support to Hamas with its now well-honed technique of combining targeted hacks with influence operations amplified on social media; what we refer to as cyber-enabled influence operations,” the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) reported in February 2024. 

However, Iran’s cyberattack activities extend far beyond the Jewish state. Tehran and its proxies have reportedly carried out cyberattacks against the United States, Great Britain, India, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Australia.

In June 2024, the director of the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) Gaby Portnoy warned that Iranian cyberwarfare had become a global security threat. 

“That makes Iranian cyber aggression an international problem, not only an Israeli one, and therefore the solution needs to be international,” Portnoy assessed.