Israel Spent Years Hacking Tehran Traffic Cameras to Track Khamenei | Hacker News Reader

Israel Spent Years Hacking Tehran Traffic Cameras to Track Khamenei

thedefensepost.com

56 pointsgambutin24 comments

How much of that is true, and how much of that is to cover and protect the actual humans on the ground feeding most of the intelligence?

I doubt they'd let their secret leak so soon into the conflict if it was even half as useful as the articles I read claim. Now on the other hand, if I wanted the Iranian counterintelligence to waste time investigating and even taking the cameras offline ...

Probably all of it: Cameras are hacked, they got the real info from a human and they want them to be shut down now.

Remember that you can burn human intelligence but you can also burn technical capacity. Israel has shown itself willing to burn technical capacities to strike (see also: the pager attacks).

I would also submit that forcing Iranian traffic engineers to investigate their camera system is probably not a very high priority at Mossad. What is much more valuable is forcing other countries to change over their traffic control system to a new vendor that has been compromised by the Israelis. That is exactly how they achieved the pager compromise that they did— they fomented a crisis which forced adversaries to change their networks to a network that the Israelis controlled. This is more effective if it is not a bluff.

Finally, the intelligence that they describe is most easily explained by the capability that they burned. You cannot have a human intelligence source sit on a street corner like that 24 hours a day in a country like Iran without someone asking questions. You absolutely need someone sitting on that corner 24 hours a day in order to get the kinds of intelligence that they got. You simply cannot collect that with a human source. On the contrary, it is quite easy to imagine how that intelligence could be gathered given only a traffic camera.

One of the things I have wondered is why a country would not create an company or VC network from people (spy agents) who for all intents and purposes look like normal citizens of any other country (perhaps even in the enemy country itself) and then just have the Country siphon off some money into that VC to buy some companies.

The fact of the matter is that you can see an Israeli connection to VPN companies like express vpn, cyberghost vpn (the israeli billionaire who owns this has donated to IDF for context iirc)

This is what is happening in the front page. Why wouldn't a nation want to create a VC network which can buy large companies in security industry in neutral countries (germany,switzerland etc.)

People would be none the wiser if this actually happens and the head VC network considering that they can just buy security options and would be even able to sell them sometimes to even their enemy state themselves.

A part of me is worried talking about this idea might give states ideas. Another part of me believes is that this might already be happening.

For record, I am not against Venture capitalism for context, but the opportunity presented by it in the context of governments spending money secretly to buy security related companies in terms of a VC network to then have the same contract with foreign enemy company feels complicated but feels to me easy enough for a nation actor to pull.

This can also not be just a single VC but can be spread across many for example.

Are we certain that this might be what could've happened in this case, I suppose not but there might be a non zero chance.

And we are already discounting the fact that in the case of isreal, sometimes they don't even do this and have it be an israeli company itself. What if they might do it to present two options: say an israeli and a german option. But both options might be tampered (I am absolutely not saying this is the case but I am just presenting a mere hypothetical)

Given the absolute budget of governments for these things and the fact that Govt. hires people so much smarter than me. Surely they must have thought of this and if that's the case then if the plan is working as intended and its hidden and public doesn't know about it and if its hidden/public doesn't know about it, the plan is working as intended.

That being said, It wouldn't be wrong to say that this feels more like a conspiracy theory. I genuinely hope I am wrong tho but why would a govt. give up on such a massive thing

Once again, This is just a thought experiment and let's keep the discussion civil. I am not against Venture Capitalism.

We did that, sorta! The CIA has run a venture capital firm for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

I think the real benefit is mostly being realized by sovereign wealth funds in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. You buy up small shares in lots of different companies and you get vision and control.

But why would say Iran take security or software from a company which could be funded In-Q-Tel for example

I mean thanks for the share, but this proves my suspicion even more because if In-Q-Tel/CIA are able to have a public company which does it. And CIA isn't hesitant of having spies. The dangerous combination of two is definitely possible.

Obviously its still suspicion but still. Might I know what your thoughts are on it too?

So now that I think about it a much better match for what you’re talking about is the belt and road initiative. This does a lot of things all rolled into one, and it eliminates the main problem with clandestine funding of things, which is that they’re never really is enough money to do what you want to do. Most of the stories in the 20th century of countries bankrolling ventures in other countries for nefarious purposes were mostly done on a shoestring budget that could be hidden from Congress. There’s enough money to pay Jackson Pollock to paint, but not enough to displace an indigenous technology industry. China has fixed that by just making it a public endeavor. They get the benefit of regulatory capture, soft power, and technological lock in and all they really have to do is spend money. The reason why this works is because stuff is expensive and eventually national pride and sense crumble to whatever needs you have for technology.

> The reason why this works is because stuff is expensive and eventually national pride and sense crumble to whatever needs you have for technology

Yes China gets soft power within the region of Neutral / allies but it can never get soft power over an enemy nation.

> Most of the stories in the 20th century of countries bankrolling ventures in other countries for nefarious purposes were mostly done on a shoestring budget that could be hidden from Congress

It's essentially a matter of secrecy then? I can find some ways to think to find money to be hidden from congress

Find Billionaires/Millionaires who lobby you and your nation and give them better national contract deals if they can secretly use their own private money and drop into technically that nation's offshore's accounts and then have that money combined with spies transfer in such a way that nobody (not even journalists can trace routes), Have them take loans from banks of their stocks price or assets that you prefer and give them preferential lending. Plus points if the billionaire/millionaire can himself be a "spy"

Suppose that offshore account converts to crypto like monero or just somehow launders it in a hard to find way with one offshore account to another with monero in between and then have that second offshore account somehow transfer that money gradually into VC operated by spies.

Think about it, You spend billions trying to have neutral allies be on your side but in conflicts of war, yes they would be beneficial but how much more beneficial would be to have access to the enemy side of security as in the case we are discussing and with just a few loops its definitely possible to hide money and be have secrecy

The best part is that even if this adds malware into the enemy nation's country, when you try to find who ran the malware, its all done in anonymous way to the general public but chances of this being the case can be very high especially given that those were air-gapped systems.

So the public is intentionally hidden this stuff from. We can't go and say that we are giving money to buy security companies from a spy network we have in enemy country to trick them into thinking that they are more safe and have them be compromised.

It would be a general outrage because the consequences would be far and reaching.

But what you can say is that we have somehow had a malware added into their air-gapped systems through various methods and have people be speculating how.

Israel is telling that their camera feeds are compromised. I don't think Iran uses an israeli company for camera feed security purposes. Most likely they use either Irani company or Saudi Arabia company if possible.

If Israel is literally saying this on public news that their feeds are compromised and isn't telling how, this does seem to be a plausible explaination of trying to infiltrate their security networks one way or the other.

Also can't say about congress but Israel is known for very secretive operations from Mossad. Money shouldn't be problem for those guys most likely.

Also there is one point to be said that even if a country can be ally, then you can have something like the belt road initiative too or if your country has lots of money/power then maybe even setup a few of these things in your ally country as you never know how the waves can change of a country from ally to enemy and vice versa.

I’m sure lots of surveillance was done, but ultimately they bombed the home of an 80-something year old man and he was at home and died. Seems like some wasted effort in hacking traffic cameras, spying on entire populations, etc for many years to just blow up the guys house; they’ll always try to sell you in the technology of obviously negative things being cool spy tech, but the reality continues to be that people are not that complex and dragnet surveillance is just dragnet surveillance and serves no better ultimate purpose.

> How much of that is true

Indeed, they bombed a school with over 150 dead due to incorrect intel. (story is there was base near the school years ago, but it had been moved)

https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/03/1167063

Good think Flock has such strong E2E encryption and internal controls on who can access camera data.

Was mass surveillance even necessary? He was sitting in his home compound in central Tehran with his grandchildren. He wasn't hiding and had resigned himself to martyrdom.

Anyone remembers stuxnet? Apparently part of a US and Israel joint operation called Olympic Games [1].

In the documentary Zero Days some anonymous source mentions there was another project within Olympic Games called Nitro Zeus[2]. This was a complete takeover of Iran's infrastructure.

I wonder if these hacks we're seeing are the remains of Nitro Zeus.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Olympic_Games

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitro_Zeus

Maintaining consistent backdoor access over a decade and a half would be a feat. The NSA might have a better idea of how their networks are are setup than their junior and mid-level staff..

These types of cameras are quite useful to authoritarian regimes for tracking dissidents and tracking protests.

So it's possible the release of this knowledge could be a ploy to encourage the Iranians to shut them down.

And yet they can't produce a single video of the "30,000 protesters killed by Iran".

Good thing Isreal is our greatest ally. If they were our enemy they'd be doing this to Americans

they might be doing it, we never know.

If you think every nation isn’t doing it to every other nation, constantly, I have a bridge to sell you (cheap!).

That is how some NSA-type agencies work around the prohibition of spying on their own citizens: they have the agency of another country do it. I think some also just ignore the prohibition. The German BND has the "space theory", the idea that the data might have theoretically been transmitted by satellites, which makes it okay to intercept.

Wait until you find out what Americans are doing to everyone else on earth (and sometimes to themselves). Americans should sit down. Don’t talk about surveillance and spies as if Americans have never ever spied or used survilliance.

So what? We want to be the strongest. The principle is not 'dont spy', the principle is 'dont spy on ME'.

You're delusional if you think the US isn't spying on you though.

They spy on everyone, they just happen to pay US-companies to do the spying to avoid any accountability.

I don't think we should also just tolerate spying on other countries. Why does the average Joe Blogs in Sweden need to be spied on by the US Government?

"Israel isn't doing it, but I'll find a way to accuse it of doing it anyway."

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