Israel Intelligence Officer Yossi Cohen’s covert affair with Qatar
The political use of cyber tools is a powerful accelerator of geopolitical confrontation. The past few years have witnessed a cyber awakening in the Middle East that has not been seen for such a long time.
Geopolitically what may seem a distant reality is the actual reality of the region. For instance, Israel who is thought to be an arch adversary of Qatar has some strong covert relations with the country. Especially, when it comes to cyberspace.
Last year, the director of Israel’s Mossad Yossi Cohen made a secret visit to Qatar earlier in February, where he met with the head of Qatari intelligence. There are various speculations about the meeting and its intent. Though logically it seems to have the core intent of technological assistance that Qatar may have been expecting from the Israel, considered to be the technological giant of the region.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News, former Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman revealed details about a secret visit to Qatar by Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen and the Israeli military’s chief of Southern Command Herzl Halevi to allegedly “beg the Qataris to keep pouring money into Hamas.”
Qatar’s Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary-general of the Supreme Committee for the Qatar World Cup in 2022, stated in an interview with ESPN that Israelis will be welcome to attend the coveted soccer event in their country.
Having secret connection between Israel and Qatar indicates that there will be a higher possibility that Qatar might be taking help from Israel to strengthen their cyber intelligence. As Israel is a hub for cyber surveillance after Iran in Middle East.
Now, recent news of Candiru an Israeli firm specialising in cyber-intrusion, received investment from Qatar Investment Bank. According to the Citizen Lab report, Candiru’s exploits have been linked to nation-state malware attacks observed in Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
It was also discovered that Candiru likely made sweet deals with Uzbekistan’s National Security Service, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Singapore’s intelligence services, which was also a company linked to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.
Qatar hired Israeli based cybersecurity firm “Sdema Group” for providing security at the 2022 World Cup soccer championship in Qatar for a several dozen million-euro contract in past also.
Overall it is clear that Israel keeping aside its geopolitical tensions has emerged as the leading country providing both offensive and defensive cyber warfare tools with those countries also whom they are not geopolitically aligned.
