Arrow Scandal

The Arrow Scandal By Ben Kaspit Reprinted from Maariv International (February 15, 2004)

haled Sharif has an important role in protecting Israel from the threat of ballistic missiles. Sharif is a computer technician employed by the IBM Cairo office. In the past months Sharif and other Egyptian workers have been corresponding with their colleagues at the Israeli IBM office. Their task is to detect and correct bugs in the MOTIF computer program, on which the computerized system of the Arrow missile is programmed. No, that is no mistake. Egyptian computer engineers in Cairo work with Israeli computer engineers in Tel Aviv on the most expensive and most important defense project Israel has developed in the last decade - the “Wall” project, that operates the Arrow missile batteries. If it weren’t sad it could be funny. The Arrow is the world’s only operative ABM (Anti Ballistic Missile). It is a joint US-Israeli project, with Israel developing the heart of the system, the ultra-sensitive “Green Pine” radar system, which gives the missile the capability to track and intercept incoming ballistic missiles. It is the free world’s only current viable defense against such threats. Imagine U.S. scientists in the 1940s working on the first nuclear bomb and corresponding for that purpose with their colleagues in Moscow. The affair was discovered through the intervention of Maariv, that transferred the information to the defense establishment. Since then, for the past weeks, special teams of experts have been closely reviewing all of the computerized systems, including the Arrow, to clean, detect and neutralize bugs or “Trojan horses” that may have been implanted in them by hostile elements. It should be stressed that no damages or hostile implantations of bugs into the system have been discovered to date. Even if they were discovered we would probably not be allowed to publish it. Nor do we know of any legal violations, except for the violation of common sense.

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ATrojan horse Israel and Egypt have peaceful relations. It is important to encourage trade between them, but a clear red line should be drawn when it comes to such sensitive security systems. Egyptian intelligence is known for its efficiency and creativity. It surely has the means to find out what is happening at computer companies located in Cairo. That is how intelligence organizations work all over the world. The working assumption has to be that everything that passed between Tel Aviv and Cairo has been revealed to the Egyptian intelligence, at the very least. The IDF’s sophisticated combat systems, including the Arrow, are completely computerized. The Air

Force is computerized to the gills. Everything flashes on computers screens. In the old days, to shoot, you had to pull a trigger. Today, more and more, you press “send” on a computer to release a missile or a guided bomb or to operate a sophisticated radar system. When F-16s fly over Ein Saheb in Syria the Air Force commander sits in his Tel Aviv bureau and e-mails them a photo of the target area marked with a red arrow. The pilot adjusts the photo to the view he sees, collates the arrows and presses “send”. One little bug implanted into the system would destroy the process. When it comes to the Arrow the implications are more serious: a computer engineer can introduce a Trojan horse into the operating system planned to be activated during real time use of the system and cause its collapse. It is simple, effective and fatal. According to that scenario, at the moment of truth, when ballistic missiles are on their way to Israel the “wall” system will be activated and then collapse. As a result the actual Arrow missiles will be diverted from their course, or blow up in the air, or just dally. It sounds like a completely fantastical scenario, but that scenario has been placed on more then a few desks in Israel in the last weeks. Maariv has documents that attest to the tight, nearly daily contact between Israeli IBM engineers and the company’s Egyptian office to find bugs in the Arrow operating system. Moreover: during our examination we learned that the next generation of the MOTIF software is being developed in Cairo. From there it was supposed to be sent here, to undergo some further adjustments and replace the current missile system that is supposed to defend Israeli skies from surprise missile attacks.

A work stop in Egypt The story is simple. Computer software is Anglophonic. IBM’s central Middle East office is in Cairo, and it is the office in charge of regionalizing into Arabic and Hebrew. That is all fine and well until it comes to such sensitive programs. For now, the blunder has been fixed, the route has been blocked and there is no more contact between Tel Aviv and Cairo. Better late than never. Nobody is blaming Egypt of anything. They say there are excellent computer engineers in Cairo who managed to solve many of the project’s flaws. IBM says nothing physical was transferred between the offices, it was only electronic correspondences. Other sources inside the system cite codes, bugs and valuable information that flowed between those two points for a long time. Not to speak of the next generation system that was developed there. The defense establishment and the Air Force decline to

comment on the affair. A senior Air Force officer approved its details and says everything is under control and examination now, under the supervision of a special team created for the purpose. IBM spokesman Yossi Shoval issued the following statement: “IBM has a large number of development laboratories in the world (including in Israel) that serve its clients throughout the world, develop products and handle problems and customer support. In a comprehensive examination we conducted we found there was no exposure of the specific software that was employed in the project in question and in the other IBM software packages operating in the defense establishment. We especially wish to emphasize that no IBM software package provided to the defense establishment was exposed to the infiltration of unwanted and unplanned elements. We want to emphasize that our activities are fully coordinated with the defense establishment”. Off the record, IBM officials confirmed the story. They say everyone in the defense establishment who needed to know the Egyptian office was handling bugs knew. They stressed no damage had been detected. Meanwhile, the defense system closed the strange breach.

The fence within A comprehensive, professional, thorough, thick resource book just came out about Israel’s security fence. The booklet was produced by a security team headed by Brig.-Gen. Mike Herzog, the defense minister’s military secretary, ahead of the international trial at the Hague. It is fascinating, illuminating and convincing. It almost convinces you that the original route, the one that is about to be dramatically changed, was justified. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz presented the booklet to his British counterpart Geoff Hoon. It has valuable information explaining how justified the fence is (regardless of its route), how much it is actually “Arafat’s fence” and how stupid we are that we just started building it seriously. From 1995 to the beginning of the current confrontation there were 12 suicide attacks in Israel in which 79 people were murdered. By last week there had been another 128 suicide attacks (in which 140 suicides were killed) murdering 464 people. The suicide attacks are less than half a percent of all the attacks in the conflict (20,000) but cause 50 percent of the casualties. Besides the 140 successful suicide bombers another 120 would-be suicides arrested on the way to their missions are in Israeli jails, as well as hundreds more arrested at earlier stages. The assault of suicide attacks is defined in the booklet as “an assault on the Israeli

fabric of life”. The booklet reviews the atrocities one by one. The families that were wiped out. The brainwashing that produces the endless production line of suicides. The unbearable ease of the process, from donning the explosive belt to the calm, careless stroll from the edge of Tulkarem to the center of Netanya. The fence, it says, was forced upon Israel by the flood of blood on the ground. Its figures are surprising: of the 235 kilometers of phases I and II, 94.5 kilometers are built on the Green Line or

within one kilometer of it. And here is the surprise: in many places the fence was built west of the Green line inside Israeli sovereign territory. On Mt. Gilboa several agricultural fields were split down the middle and the farmers of Kibbutz Ma’aleh Gilboa go through special gates to their fields on the other side. The figures prove, according to the booklet, that the fence was motivated by security not political motives. All of the professional considerations for drafting the route are reviewed, as are the efforts to ease the Palestinians’ lives. The theory comparing the

fence to the Berlin Wall is shattered. Measures to defend the Ben Gurion Airport and highway 443 are detailed. Only four percent of the fence are really a wall, about 8.8 kilometers, most of which were already built during the Oslo period or as part of the Trans-Israel Highway, for different reasons. The fence is defined as “dismantleable”. If the threat of terrorism is lifted, the fence will be lifted too. And besides, there is news: Israel does not intend to build the “eastern fence.” ▲