Israeli sky-hack switched off Syrian radars countrywide

More rumours are starting to leak out regarding the mysterious Israeli air raid against Syria in September. It is now suggested that "computer to computer" techniques and "air-to-ground network penetration" took place.

The latest revelations are made by well-connected Aviation Week journalists. Electronic-warfare correspondent David Fulghum says that US intelligence and military personnel "provided advice" to the Israelis regarding methods of breaking into the Syrian air-defence network.

Aviation Week's sources apparently said that the first move in the raid was a combined bombing and electronic attack on a Syrian radar site near the Turkish border, which allowed Israeli warplanes to fly in undetected. It seems that there was also some use of old-school brute force jamming.

So far, so conventional. However, Fulghum's unidentified Pentagon contacts also said that after the Israelis crossed into Syrian airspace, US sensors in the region noted that the whole Syrian radar system "went off the air" for some time while the main raid on the Dayr as-Zawr facility (believed to have been a nuclear plant of some kind) went ahead. The Register