World
Iranian cyberattacks on Israel surged in 2026, cyber chief says
The number of Iranian cyberattacks against Israel has shot up since the launch of the US-Israeli war with Iran this year, Yossi Karadi, director general of the National Cyber Directorate, was quoted as saying on Monday.
Karadi told German newspaper Die Welt that in June 2025, during the first round of war between Israel and Iran, Israel’s authorities registered around 1,600 hostile cyber incidents.
During the same month in 2026, the number had jumped to some 4,800 incidents, he told the paper.
“Some groups are very skilled,” Karadi said, according to the German text of the interview, identifying the Iranian cyber warfare apparatus as “a multi-layered system.”
At its core is the Iranian military and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Karadi said, which both have complete cyber warfare divisions, but below that level are civilians and activists “who hack out of conviction or are paid to do so.”
Karadi identified Iran’s digital propaganda, including its popular Lego-style AI animation videos, as part of the cyber war waged by the IRGC and its activists, which supplement their more direct hacking attempts.
“We can handle them, but we have to take them seriously,” he said. “Unlike in the kinetic realm, there’s no ceasefire in cyberspace.”
Karadi said the attacks were directed against systems used by Israel’s critical infrastructure, central organizations, small to medium-sized companies and the public, citing law practices and accounting firms as among the smaller ones hit.
“So far — and hopefully it stays that way — we’ve managed to fend off attacks on critical infrastructure,” he said.
Read more: From anti-Israel Legos to fake footage, Iran’s AI propaganda owns the digital battlefield
Companies that were easier to penetrate often ended up having their computer systems wiped, he said, without mentioning any names.
Karadi added that he is building a “multi-year plan with three main focuses,” namely cloud security, cyber and AI, and quantum computing, which he said he plans to be operational by 2030.
In January, Karadi warned that Israel needs to bolster its preparedness for what he described as a fast-approaching “cyber war.”
He disclosed that in 2025 alone, the Cyber Directorate handled more than 26,000 cyberattacks, a 55 percent increase over 2024.
Israel ranks as the third-most-attacked country in the world, according to Microsoft’s latest data, with 3.5% of all global cyberattacks directed at the country over the past year.
Iran typically denies carrying out hacking campaigns against other countries while reporting attacks on itself.
