Reportage
‘Adopt your own sniper’ – Emilia Romania hosts Israeli hackers
When hired by Italian companies, the “ethical” Israeli hackers will deploy all hacking techniques, including social engineering against unsuspecting employees, to test corporate defenses.
More and more companies in Reggio Emilia are relying on Israeli cybersecurity, with technologies and experts coming from the Israeli Army's Unit 8200. As strange as that sounds, it’s true: on May 22, at the Florim Gallery in Modena, the Zero Trust & Cybersecurity Summit 2025 will take place, now in its fourth edition, where corporate CEOs will meet “ethical hackers from Israel” who will discuss “practical case studies for the offensive approach.”
The event, which has been held for four years at the Florim Gallery, is organized by the Italian-Israeli companies Tekapp and the closely-linked Tek8200, both based in Modena. Founded in 2014 by Daniel Rozenek, Tekapp is part of a joint venture with Silynx, which is based in Tel Aviv. The other co-founder is Alex Peleg, who worked for several years at the Israeli Defense Ministry. “The made-in-Israel skills and technologies of our team, distributed between Modena and Tel Aviv, allow you to sleep soundly,” boasts Tekapp's website prominently. “Our unit in Israel is composed of ethical Israeli hackers from Unit 8200.” The company also claims to use the “Cyber Israeli Protocol.”
Unit 8200 is the elite unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) created to conduct military operations specializing in cyber warfare, espionage, surveillance and control. The 8200 and the Mossad are believed to be behind the pager explosions in Lebanon in September 2024, which left 11 people dead (including a child) and 3,000 injured.
There is a history of similar business initiatives: Unit 8200 personnel also founded the NSO Group, the creator of the Pegasus spyware sold to a number of governments, which allows them to take control of any cell phone, intercept calls, turn on microphones and cameras and access encrypted chats.
Most recently, Unit 8200 ended up at the center of a journalistic investigation by +972, The Guardian and Local Call which revealed that the unit was working on mass surveillance technology using artificial intelligence, aimed at gathering information on Palestinian civilians, exposing them to privacy violations, retaliation, arbitrary arrests and killings.
The “Red Team” service Tekapp is offering to Italian companies is described in rather unsettling terms: “Adopt your own sniper,” with an image of a sniper firing, is featured on the cover of a sample report. This shows how permeated with militarism the approach of this “civilian” company truly is. In another place, the website warns: “Disgruntled or misguided employees represent your great vulnerability.”
When hired by Italian companies, the “ethical” Israeli hackers will deploy all hacking techniques, including social engineering against unsuspecting employees, to test corporate defenses. But how far does defense go, and where does the control and spying on “disgruntled” or inconvenient employees, activists, unionists and competitors start, mimicking the total control Israel has put in place over Palestinians? And how “ethical” are the hackers who are working in service of Israel's cyber warfare?
The companies using these cyber-protection services include (according to Tekapp’s website) Florim, La Fenice (both ceramics companies), Inalca (a large cattle slaughtering company), which will be the guest of honor at the 2025 summit, as well as Accenture (Ammagamma) and others. In past editions, Barilla, Dallara and Panini have also taken the stage at the Tekapp-organized event.
The main partner for this edition will be Cynet, a multinational cybersecurity company with offices in the U.S. and Israel. Other partners are Check Point, founded in Tel-Aviv by Gil Shwed, himself a former member of Unit 8200, and other Israeli cyber companies such as Zero Network, Cynergy, Cylinx, and Italian companies such as Syneto, Wimore, TeamSystem, and the Swiss insurance company Zurich.
Until a few days ago, the conference’s website openly featured that it was being sponsored by the Emilia-Romagna Region. After requests for clarification from il manifesto, pointing out the disturbing ties to the Israeli military, the Region's press office hastily stated that it had sponsored the event in past years but had not renewed its support for 2025, warning the company not to display the Region’s logo for this edition. The logo was immediately removed.
But while the Region “slinked away” (without giving any particular reason why), the program still features two speaking slots by two university professors, from the Milan Polytechnic and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE). The link between Tekapp and UNIMORE extends far beyond the conference itself, with joint seminars and collaborations for years.
As Raffaele Spiga from the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement points out: “The reason why Israel is so advanced in cybersecurity that it can sell it to foreign companies is because it has tested these tools [...] at checkpoints, along the apartheid wall, in the Occupied Territories, to identify targets, to control the movement of the Palestinian population and maintain their segregation. The presence of universities at this summit is shameful.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/adotta-il-tuo-cecchino-gli-affari-emiliani-della-cyberguerra-israeliana on 2025-04-10