Anyone who deals with technology, or is familiar with it, can't remain indifferent to what is happening in the IDF's Unit 8200. The technological breakthroughs, the intelligence superiority, the advances – these all position the unit, and Israel, as a world leader that is at the same level as the US, Russia, or China. 

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The public is virtually unaware of all this. By its very intelligence/operational nature, 8200 mostly operates in the shadows. When it makes headlines, it's usually in a less-than-positive context, one that focuses on the typical profile of the soldiers who serve in it or the enormous salaries its veterans earn when they enter the world of high-tech. 

Very little is said about the unit's real work, or how important that work is to Israel. This has to do with a genuine concern about losing assets or exposing intelligence to the enemy, thus hurting the enormous superiority of intelligence Israel has over its enemies (and sometimes, its partners). So this interview is a rare and one-time peek into the unit's activity and the future of the technological world it operates. 

In an exclusive interview to Israel Hayom, Col. Y., deputy commander of the unit's digital operations, reveals that the unit has made a breakthrough in its ability to identify targets automatically, which he says will comprise a dramatic blow to the enemy's abilities in the wars to come. He also shares details about how Israel is handling Iran and Hezbollah, saying, "There is no technological-intelligence problem that does not have a solution." 

Y. is married to Michal, whom he met while they were both serving in the unit, and they have two young daughters. He grew up in Rishon Lezion, enlisted in 8200 and has remained there while rising through the ranks. He has served as head of planning as well as commander of one of the unit's centers of operations, as well as intelligence aide to both Aviv Kochavi (now IDF chief of staff) and Herzi Halevi when they were heads of the Military Intelligence Directorate. Y. has a BA in law and history from Tel Aviv University and an MA in business administration from TAU and an MA in public policy from Harvard. A decade ago, he was awarded the Israel Security Prize for his work in promoting the unit's cyber capabilities.

According to Y., 8200 has undergone dramatic changes in the past few decades. He points to four main reasons: The first has to do with the "red" site, the enemy. "When I arrived, the enemies were mainly state entities. We were a passive unit that operated mostly based on the lessons of the [1973] Yom Kippur War. Today, on the spectrum from the Iranian nuclear program to a lone terrorist in Judea and Samaria, from states to terrorist armies, the difference is endless, and there is no one recipe for how to do it correctly." 

The second reason stems from the "blue" side – us. "The time between wars demands a completely different pace from the organization. We used to deal with warnings about a war, and a few times a year we'd have to provide backup for a special operation. Today we take offensive action nearly every day. The issue of partnering on operations is also different. In the past, 8200 served only the strategic echelon. The first time I arrived at a field command center, I was already a seasoned major. Today, our intelligence serves the field. I'm friends with battalion commanders, and cooperate closely with them. 

The third reason is changes to technology. "We started out by listening. Nasser and Hussein talked, and we'd listen to the conversation using some tools or others. Today it's a completely different kind of intelligence. When I have access to your computer, I get things that you never planned to communicate to anyone else in the world. It's a transition from passivity to activity, and that's a totally different kind of intelligence. The amount of valuable intelligence in the world hasn't changed, and secrets remain secret – but it's now much more complicated to extract them."

Q: More complicated? 

"When my grandfather wanted to tell the universe something, he would pick up his dial telephone and talk. Same for leaders. Anything they had to say to the world, they said on the phone. Today, anyone who understands a thing knows to keep away from digital media as much as possible, and we need to maneuver through an endless quantity of background noise and know to separate the wheat from the chaff," Y. says. 

The fourth reason is related to who and how intelligence is created. "There aren't any more new immigrants from Arab countries or children of [those immigrants] who speak Arabic at home. Today, these are kids who are taken out of high school who don't know a word of Arabic or Farsi, and you teach them everything they know. We've also had to reorganize, become multidisciplinary, in order to better use the intelligence," he explains. 

All these have led to a revolution within 8200. In the past, the unit was mainly focused on collecting intelligence. Today, it also deals with utilizing it. This is also how labor is divided between the unit's two deputy commanders: Y deals with the intelligence his counterpart is tasked with collecting. An immense amount of information comes in daily from a variety of sources (computers, cellphones, correspondence, apps, bugging, and more), and it all requires analysis and mostly the ability to prioritize and triage. 

"The technology of how to become a digital organization and how to correctly make the most of masses of data exists in the world. But I can't go to Google or Facebook or Microsoft and take it from them, or bring in a company like McKinsey to help me do it right. In this world, every organization is on its own. We had to do everyone alone." 

Q: Do you have intelligence lacunas? 

"There's no lack of data here. On the whole, there is no target that can't be cracked, given the appropriate effort." 

Q: Explain. 

"In this world, the defender and the attacker have different missions. The defender needs to protect what is often an unlimited space. The attacker needs to find one weak link and use it to penetrate. In my experience – and I have some perspective – the moment we've decided that a certain target was valuable enough, [cracking it] became feasible, even if it took a few years and huge amounts of IQ." 

Q: The enemy is learning, too. 

"And it's a crazy competition to learn. The enemy aren't idiots. They see things. They ask questions. They want to understand how exactly we got to a certain place and managed to attack it. It's a constant challenge that requires us to keep moving all the time. It's a challenge that is becoming more complicated, because we used to talk about a golden source or golden piece of intelligence, and today we have a huge variety of sources. The key is to know how to make the most of them, work them, get something out of them." 

The event that led to a dramatic change in the enemy's understanding of Israel's capabilities was the operation that snuck the Stuxnet malware into the computer system of Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, interfering with its centrifuges. 

"That event, and especially after the Snowden incident. The world has emerged from the cyber dark ages. Today, everyone knows everything. It requires us to improve. Happily, the technological vector leads to more platforms and more connections, which as far as we're concerned are more potential springboards for attacks." 

Q: You said that the enemy understands. That they aren't stupid. So how do you manage not to get exposed? 

"There are entire systems that have existed here for years whose job it is to ensure that we defend our strategic assets and our methods." 

Israel is a cyber superpower, and 8200 is its engine. "I don't want to hand out grades. You can debate about whether we're in the top three or top five, but we're in the big league. I say that with confidence, and also with reservations – what we have is not trivial. It's fragile. And we need to work hard every day to protect it." 

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Y. says that this rests, first and foremost, on people. "This organization's biggest success is the quality of its people. This is very prominent when compared to our partners overseas. We can take any 18-year-old, put them through an intensive series of tests, make exact choices about who is most talented and brilliant, pay them a standard military salary of $300 a month, and assign them to cope with the most complicated cyber challenges and the most complicated intelligence questions, all in a dynamic environment and under commanders who give them a sense that they can do it. It all comes down to this. Ultimately, it's the corporals and lieutenants who lead this organization."

Q: How hard is it to get them to extend their service, given the temptations in civilian life? 

"The temptations and competition 'outside' are currently fantastic. People get offers that are several times more than what they make here. I stayed in the army for two main reasons: because it's the most interesting thing I've done in my life, and because I've met the best, most talented people I've ever encountered here. People stay because it is meaningful. They have the ability to influence, they have a broad scope of management while they are still very young. A young guy can command hundreds of people here, with operational missions 24/7, with insane technology and challenges. This is what keeps people here. We can never compete when it comes to money." 

Q: There have been reports that people are trying to steal not only your personnel, but also your secrets. 

"We're aware of the dangers that have increased, among other things, because of greater involvement in offensive cyber capabilities. Here we have people whose job it is to ensure that our secrets remain with us, and people don't do things they aren't supposed to do." 

Q: How disturbed are you by the current outrage over the Israeli offensive cyber industry? In the end, anyone who goes after them could come after you.

"We operate under the authority of and with the permission of the Israeli government, and the highest echelons know what we do and are updated on it. And we have made the choice not to be in contact with the civilian offensive cyber firms." 

Q: Why? 

"It's a strategic decision we made. The bottom line is, we prefer to cut ourselves off from them." 

Every mission 8200 carries out is approved by the topmost echelons of both the IDF and the government Y. says that in that respect, there is no difference between cyber actions and battle offensives, or the launch of weapons at enemy targets. 

"There is a lot of similarity between the process of getting a physical action approved and the process of approval for a cybernet one," he says. 

Intelligence is collected in a variety of ways: online, from the air, from the sea, on land, and more. It is fed into the MI Directorate's information database, which includes the vast majority of data that exists in the IDF. It was established to make the most of intelligence, what the IDF knows about the enemy. 8200 has been made responsible for this process, and its role includes recording the information, analyzing it, and disseminating it to various officials. 

During Operation Guardian of the Walls in May, an innovative new machine was tested for the first time. "We implemented capabilities that we have developed here when it comes to listening, test, pixels, and how all these are structured, and the ability to work them and make them accessible in a way that is relevant to making operative decisions such as deciding on targets." 

Q: Be specific. Does this machine know how to create targets on its own? 

"Take, for example, a hole used to fire rockets. It's not enough that I collect information about various sensors. I need to locate disturbances on the ground ahead of time. If someone is digging, moving dirt, maybe there's a stretch of fabric covering it to hide the activity, or someone plants something, covers it, and leaves. I operate a super-heavy algorithm about all the visible information collected through a variety of means – from satellites to lookout points – locate the disturbance, find the cloth – which looks no different from any clothesline in Gaza – locate the number of days the digging took place, and can integrate all this with intelligence from other sources and make it into coordinates. 

Q: And still, 4,000 rockets were fired at Israel. 

"This is a new machine that has only been in operation a few months. This means we have a machine, we have a system, and it works. It's not hermetic. But I think that with the system we've developed, we can overcome this challenge." 

The system Y. is describing is called "Gospel," and it is an application that recommends targets. "You receive automatic target recommendations. This doesn't cancel the need to research targets, and it doesn't eliminate the need for analysis, but the system provides recommendations. During Guardian of the Walls the system alone created hundreds of new targets in only four days." 

Q: Is it also effective 'between wars'? 

"Between wars, we try, for example, to map the Iranian presence in Syria. For that, we need to do smart geography, using endless sensors that give us a work surface that serves as a base for researchers who identify the Iranians' points of equilibrium. The Iranian operation in Syria is super secret. Everything is secret, encoded. They understand that they are under attack and are doing everything to conceal themselves. Still, we are managing to put together a pretty decent puzzle. These are things we couldn't have done in the past."

The flood of information demands that Y. and his people handle an enormous amount of intelligence items every day, in different countries and in different languages. "In the past, even if you'd given me another 1,000 soldiers who speak different languages, it couldn't have been done. Today, I can activate smart logics, like speech-to-text, and extract what is most valuable from the millions of items that I collect, and send just these along to my people. It's phenomenal." 

Q: That's where you are? Anyone who uses translation programs knows they have a lot of failures and mistakes.

"That's exactly the difference between us and civilians … we need to know how to aim precisely with all these raw materials, and we can't make mistakes because they are a basis for decision making. There could be a specific section of one conversation out of millions that if I don't locate, will be swallowed up by the information we have here. We can't miss anything." 

Q: And how do you handle the challenges from the other side, from encoding to the use of code words? 

"That's the core of our challenge, and we need the best people on it. There are areas where to stay in the loop we need to be the best in the world." 

Q: Such as? 

"In the cyber world, for example. The world of digital technology. This is why our applications and algorithms need to be the best in the world." 

'We are a national treasure' 

Y. thinks that we are still in the midst of the cyber revolution, and it could go on nearly forever. Despite the huge advances, there are plenty of questions and problems that remain unsolved. During Operation Guardian of the Walls, it was important to the government to locate Hamas' Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar and kill them. 8200 played a major part in that challenge, but could not make a breakthrough. "We were partners in that effort. There are intelligence questions that are really tough, and I won't say whether or not we're close."

Q: The proof is in the pudding. 

"No argument. And this isn't the only example. Again, the other side is very aware of the threat." 

Q: But there are places where you can't get it wrong. The Iranian nuclear program, for example. You can always take out Sinwar. With Iran, you won't get a second chance." 

"I repeat what I already said: in my experience in my 24 years in this organization, given the right investment of energy and resources, there is no target that cannot be cracked. Period."

Q: Including Hezbollah's precision missile project? 

"That's an excellent example of no target being uncrackable, if enough is invested. It requires constant maintenance." 

Q: In the end, you're expected to provide advanced warnings. During Guardian of the Walls rockets went flying at Jerusalem, and Israel was surprised. 

"Warning is our most basic mission, but apart from collecting intelligence it requires things like interpretation and decision making. As someone who has perspective on all the major operations we've waged in Gaza, we had unprecedented superiority of intelligence during Guardian of the Walls." 

Q: With all that superiority, if you ask the average citizen, they'll say the results of the operation weren't impressive. Is that frustrating?

"I get up every morning to prevent unwanted wars, and make sure that if we are involved in a conflict, that the IDF can win it as quickly as possible. We do the maximum we can to achieve that end, but the world is dynamic, and there are factors such as the decision-making process here or just luck. Still, I can say that the IDF has fantastic intelligence. Most militaries in the world would die for the level and depth of knowledge the IDF has about our enemies." 

Q: How often do you get a piece of intelligence or a report, clutch your head, and say, 'This can't be'? 

"I'm not the right person to ask, because I really love intelligence. But it happens a lot. We get intelligence that makes you wonder, every time." 

Q: If the average citizen knew what you do here, both in terms of technology and in terms of intelligence, what would he say to himself? 

"He'd feel boundless pride. Really, really proud. There are young people here with fantastic responsibility and endless commitment, who are doing things that are insane. This place is a national treasure." 

The post 'No target is un-hackable. Period'  appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

"I'm an analog guy in a digital world," Israeli singer-songwriter Alon Oleartchik said in one of his better-known songs, expressing the concern many people feel that the physical world is fading out of our lives. The first few decades of the information revolution bolstered that concern. The more technology progressed, the more activities began taking place via computer – and later smartphones – the more the world that could be sensed seemed to be disappearing. Futurists, some happily and some less so, predicted that soon everything would be digitized.

People began waking up from the dream even before philosophers started to mourn the death of the physical world. The first people to identify the process were marketers in the US. Alongside the massive increase in online sales, they found to their surprise that customers continued to visit stores – but that they were different customers with different demands. They expected to find everything they had gotten used to online in brick and mortar shops. Shops that did not adjust to the new demands met with losses. Many closed. Stores that saw the change coming and rolled with it gave birth to the "phygital" trend – a hybrid of physical and digital elements.

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"The coronavirus pandemic that burst into our lives this past year and changed a lot in the world order, sped up the process," says Mike Kemelmakher, a veteran member of the Israeli high-tech scene and a former VP of innovation at the global firm SAP.

"On one hand, the closures, the restricted movement, and the public's fear of being in crowded places became a catalyst for the development of new solutions that could overcome a stop in the normal process of human existence. On the other, it became clear beyond all doubt that humanity would not forgo the physical world entirely and transition to an entirely digital one, even if technology allowed it," he says.

The physical world, which offers direct interaction with the environment and other people, is as vital to us as air. Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle said that humans are naturally social animals, and he was right.

According to Kemelmakher, the phygital trend does not attempt to overcome human nature, but harness it to combine digital technology with traditional physical experiences. When the merger is smooth, success is guaranteed. Sometimes it is so successful we won't notice the phygital elements that have long since become routine. Opening locks at the press of a finger, turning on machines with a voice command, trying on clothes virtually through body measurements – all these were in wide use even before people learned the term "phygital."

Effective phygital solutions are on offer in many fields, especially those that are able to combine the accessibility and speed of a computer with an unobstructed sensory experience. Instead of closing shops, fashion brands are learning how to outfit them with digital systems. Touch screens are distributed throughout the flagship store of designer Rebecca Minkoff in New York, even in the dressing rooms, to ensure contact with the shopper and ensure immediate answers to any questions or requests – without giving up the physical elements that encourage people to buy: background music, pleasant scents, and complimentary sales staff. In similar stores in China, and even branches of fast food restaurants like KFC, facial recognition technology "design" menu suggestions for walk-in customers and tries to tailor them to their emotional and physical state.

Most people enjoy integrating their physical and digital worlds and finding a balance they enjoy. One study conducted in Spain indicates that no less than 78% of respondents intended to shop both online and in stores. Only a few customers will limit themselves to one or the other: 13% said they would restrict themselves to buying from brick and mortar stores, and 9% said they would only buy things online.

Theoretically, everything can be purchased online, but in many cases, the purchase isn't completed without a physical and emotional experience. It turns out that forming an emotional connection to a salesperson who can advise the shopper is lacking when one buys looking at a computer screen. The study also exposed another surprising data point: the age groups most interested in combining the physical and digital were the young ones – millennials and Gen Z, who have become ardent supporters of Amazon's chain of grocery stores, Amazon Go. The stores, which have opened in a few cities in the US, allow customers to scan a personal code upon entering. They then select their items, as people have for years, and finally leaves the store without having to wait to pay. The technological solutions ensure that their Amazon accounts will be debited automatically, and an itemized receipt will show up in their accounts on the site.

Amazon Go's phygital model allows the shopper to skip the physical experience of waiting in line to pay, which no one really enjoys, but allows them the enjoyable part of the physical experience – wandering among the tempting sections while being exposed to colors, tastes, and smells, as well as other shoppers.

Don't worry, banks won't disappear

There are fields that appear impervious to the phygital trend because of their inherent conservatism or objective reasons. Tourism is one. People can't be transported to an exotic beach or charming city street on the other side of the world to sample the trip for which they are making reservations. And once people are abroad, why would they need to bolster their experience digitally? Nevertheless, phygital elements are making inroads in this sector, as well, such as technology that allows tourists visiting the Old City of Jerusalem to see how archaeological remnants looked when they were part of a standing building.

There are also more signs that the banking of the future will become phygital. The number of bank branches will drop, but banks are unlikely to disappear. Branches that remain will look more like cafes or Apple stores.

The heads of Britain's Barclay's Bank tried to beat the future to the punch and has turned dozens of branches throughout the UK that were losing money into co-working spaces or even workshop venues. In addition to the repurposing, the bank continues to offer its traditional services at those branches, emphasizing the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.

In July 2020, the first phygital bank branch opened in Russia. It features three parameters: existing customers are identified biometrically and passing customers by their smartphones; a lack of typical teller stations; and a completely paperless model. The customers choose a seat where they are most comfortable (next to a coffee table, on a sofa, or on a window seat), and tellers approach them carrying wireless electronic devices. This is a deep-seated change that will alter the relationship between bank customers and their demands from the bank staff.

"If we combine the basic idea of phygital with the combination of specialized hardware, artificial intelligence, and cloud technology, we can offer solutions that will make life better and not only guarantee profits for an entrepreneur," says Kemelmakher, who has recently been focused on a new medical diagnostics initiative.

"The trend we are seeing now is leading to a reduction in medical diagnostics equipment. If we want to make it easy and common to use, and the healthcare system wants this because it saves lives and ultimately reduces national expenditure on health care, we must adjust it to the limitations of the physical world.

"What are the limitations? Picture the average community clinic in Israel, or anywhere else. First of all, it's a relatively small space, and you can't install any bombastic diagnostic equipment that requires space. There are also at least two other limitations that are hard to ignore: that workers at community clinics don't know how to operate [the equipment], and the budget of those clinics certainly doesn't cover expensive diagnostic equipment. So the way out is to develop small, inexpensive equipment that fights the physical requirements," Kemelmakher explains.

Q: How has the COVID pandemic influenced this trend?

"Dramatically. The world before COVID was controlled by concentration: we dragged ourselves to big research centers, places where there were thousands of people at one time, and were sometimes severely overburdened and overcrowded. In the post-COVID world, we won't need to go to a central institution to be tested, because most vital things will be done at home with small, inexpensive, easy-to-use equipment. The achievements of the Israeli company Nanox, which develops small smart X-ray machines for clinics and recently held a successful IPO, are a clear signpost. The entire medical infrastructure will be improved and changed unrecognizably."

Q: You're talking about an enormous change to medical infrastructure that will require a lot of money.

"It's an investment that will pay for itself both in terms of economics and health care. The primary goal of every effort is to make medicine proactive and based on early detection, rather than being based on responses to illnesses that have already developed. Of course, it will reduce the long-term costs to the healthcare system. Decentralization rather than concentration, like in physical life … Equipment linked to the cloud will send data to an expert immediately, who can sit far away from the clinic and analyze it. Second, thanks to AI the equipment will be so smart that it will be able to instruct the user and we won't need to train community nurses.

"The ramifications will be amazing: tests that have thus far been considered complicated and awkward will be easy to carry out, fast, and accurate. But the phygital innovations don't end there. In the next decade, equipment will be so easy to use that people will do all the necessary diagnostics at home. In the foreseeable future, every bit will have a medical station connected to the cloud. Medical sensors at home will replace the need to stay in a hospital to recover after surgeries. Incidentally, they've been talking about these trends for some time, and unfortunately, because of the conservatism in the medical field, they got stuck until the pandemic arrived and upended everything. The way I see it, COVID will do for medicine what 9/11 did for cybersecurity – there will be a leap forward that will be based on merging the digital and the physical."

Q: Will the digital make its way into fields that were once totally hands-on?

"No doubt, and it's already happening. The field of fitness and physical training, which was once seen as totally hands-on, is a great example. The pandemic caused gyms to close all over the world, whether because health authorities ordered it or because users didn't want to encounter other users. Either way, training equipment became smart. That integration is amazing, and thanks to it, the gym is moving into the home. How do we get over the fact that the gym has personal trainers, and the home doesn't? The phygital approach offers at least two feasible solutions.

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"The first solution allows the training equipment to train you by connecting to the cloud and to AI. It will build a training plan, follow it, and provide feedback. The second solution is for a personal trainer to keep track of your progress from a distance. The existing systems allow you to see people working out and trainers if it's important to you to be in contact with them in real-time.

"In effect, the phygital tools offer a lot more than that. The treadmill can offer you the experience of a walk-in Paris or London, and so can a home stationary bike. For example, I 'biked' through Rome without leaving the house – the simulation I did in training exactly matches the physical route that goes through the Italian capital, including mimicking the tough uphills – a 25-degree slope – that only the top athletes can climb. I can compare my performance on that route to that of other people who work out, and compete with them. This year, people even organized a virtual Tour de France race like that, which was an exact copy of the traditional race – the first phygital championship, if you will."

The post 'COVID will do for healthcare what 9/11 did for cybersecurity'  appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The Associated Press was on the verge of publishing a story about how AlAhmed, who is based in the Washington area, had been targeted by hackers posing as a female journalist. Now, just two days before the article was set to go live, another young woman had sidled up to him over the internet, trying to entice him to read an article and share it online.

"They will never stop," AlAhmed wrote in a Nov. 6 message to the AP. "They think a hot girl can lure me."

The AP flagged the exchange to Canadian internet watchdog Citizen Lab, which was already helping AlAhmed deal with the hackers. Citizen Lab quickly determined that the Twitter account, purportedly belonging to an Egyptian writer named Mona A.Rahman , was part of a separate operation. In fact, she wasn't even trying to hack AlAhmed — she was trying to enlist him in an ambitious global disinformation effort linked to Tehran.

In a report published Tuesday, Citizen Lab said A.Rahman was but a small piece of a years-old, multilingual campaign aimed at seeding anti-Saudi, anti-Israel and anti-American stories across the internet. Citizen Lab, which is based at the University of Toronto's Munk School, said it believes "with moderate confidence" that the operation is aligned with Iran. The campaign is another indication of how online disinformation is being tested by countries well beyond Russia, whose interference into the 2016 U.S. presidential election was laid out in vivid detail in special prosecutor Robert Mueller's report.

"What this shows is that more and more parties are entering the disinformation game," said John Scott-Railton, a Citizen Lab researcher, "and they're constantly learning."

In London, Iranian Embassy press secretary Mohammad Mohammadi denied that his government had anything to do with digital disinformation, saying that Iran was "the biggest victim" of such campaigns and had called for international regulations to curb them. He referred further questions to Iran's Communications Ministry, whose deputy minister did not immediately return a message Tuesday.

Scott-Railton and his colleagues ended up identifying 135 fake articles that were published as part of the campaign, which they dubbed "Endless Mayfly" because, like the short-lived insect, the bogus stories tended to disappear soon after they began to spread.

The article A.Rahman was trying to get AlAhmed to share — a claim that Israel's then-defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, had been fired for being a Russian spy — was typical: The article had startling news, it was hosted on a fake version of a Harvard University website and had a host of spelling and grammatical mistakes. Articles shared by other fake personas followed a similar pattern. They made inflammatory claims about Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States presented on lookalike versions of respected news sites.

"Ivanka Trump says it is unbelievable that women cannot drive in Saudi Arabia," said one article posted to a site dressed up to look Foreign Policy magazine. "Saudi Arabia funds the US Mexico border Wall," said another, hosted on a site imitating The Atlantic.

The campaign seems to have been largely ineffectual — Scott-Railton noted that "most of their stories got almost no organic buzz" — but a couple did break through.

In March 2017 a fake Belgian newspaper article claiming that then-French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron's campaign was being one-third funded by Saudi money was widely shared in French ultra-nationalist circles, including by Marion Marechal, the granddaughter of French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. A few months later another site mimicking a Swiss publication tricked the Reuters news agency and other outlets into publishing a false report that Saudi Arabia had written a letter to FIFA, soccer's governing body, demanding that archrival Qatar be barred from hosting the 2012 World Cup. The report was later withdrawn.

Citizen Lab said it first got wind of the suspected Iranian disinformation campaign when a British web developer debunked one of the fake articles on Reddit two years ago. The developer pointed out that the story — which suggested that British Prime Minister Theresa May was "dancing to the tune" of Saudi Arabia — had been published on a website using the URL "indepnedent," imitating the legitimate British news site, The Independent, and was linked to a network of other suspicious sites, including "bloomberq," a clone of the news agency Bloomberg. A third site, "daylisabah," was a fake version of the Turkish publication Daily Sabah.

"Did we just get an insight into a fake news operation?" the developer asked at the time.

Citizen Lab confirmed his hunch, later connecting the sites to an incident in which another Twitter user, Bina Melamed, tried to persuade Israeli journalists to share the same fake Harvard article that AlAhmed received.

When one of the reporters privately confronted Melamed about why she was pushing nonsense, the answer was unusually straightforward.

"I like challenging and controversial stories," Melamed said. "Sometimes they are fake and sometimes they are not."

Outside experts who reviewed Citizen Lab's report gave a qualified verdict. Both FireEye and ClearSky Cyber Security, U.S. and Israeli companies respectively, said they recognized elements of the digital infrastructure flagged by Citizen Lab from their own reporting, but ClearSky researcher Ohad Zaidenberg said he wanted to see more evidence before attributing the social media personas to Iran.

Speaking generally, he said the apparent clumsiness of the online disinformation should not be a reason to dismiss it.

"It gets better each day," he said.

Most of the personas mentioned in Citizen Lab's report — such as A.Rahman and Melamed — have been suspended. Messages left with a handful of surviving accounts — sent via Twitter and Reddit — elicited no response. Emails sent to half a dozen addresses used to register several bogus websites — including bloomberq, daylisabah, foriegnpolicy, theatlatnic and indepnedent — either weren't returned or bounced back as undeliverable.

AlAhmed said he was intrigued to hear that A.Rahman had been tied to the Iranian government. Despite knowing from the start that the whole thing was a charade, AlAhmed struck a wistful note in a recent interview about his interactions with the attractive-looking A.Rahman. At one point, she had written to him inviting him to stay at an apartment she claimed to have in London.

"A small part of me thought, 'I hope this is real,'" AlAhmed said.

He quickly made clear that he was kidding.

"I told my wife," he said.

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