Israel is said to have hacked into Iran’s traffic camera networks to spy on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian officials for years before his assassination on Saturday and the US-Israel air strikes, as part of an operation that involved cyber intrusion, human intelligence, and advanced data analytics.

Nearly all the traffic cameras in Tehran had been hacked for years, their images encrypted and transmitted to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel, two unnamed sources told The Financial Times on Monday.

“We knew Tehran like we know Jerusalem,” one current Israeli intelligence official told the newspaper.

“And when you know [a place] as well as you know the street you grew up on, you notice a single thing that’s out of place.”

One camera proved particularly useful because it gave a clear view of where bodyguards and drivers of senior officials liked to park their personal cars and provided a detailed profile of their daily routines.

Tehran CCTV footage reveals “pattern of life”

A granular surveillance picture was built up of a “pattern of life” outside the closely guarded compound on Pasteur Street, an important street in the capital in which key government institutions are located, and where Khamenei was killed on Saturday.

The data collection was made possible by hundreds of different streams of intelligence, which included sources from Israel's elite military cyber unit Unit 8200, the human assets recruited by its foreign intelligence agency Mossad, and the mountains of data digested by military intelligence into daily briefs.

Algorithms that did not exist a few years ago were then applied to detailed dossiers on members of these security guards that included their addresses, hours of duty, routes they took to work, and, most importantly, who they were usually assigned to protect and transport.

The hacked camera network was just one strand of intelligence used during the operation.

The newspaper added that on the day of the attack, Israel was also able to disrupt single components of roughly a dozen or so mobile phone towers near the compound, making the phones seem as if they were busy when called to prevent Khamenei’s protection detail from receiving warnings.

This real-time data stream – one of hundreds, according to the report – contributed to Israeli intelligence and the CIA's ability to identify the precise timing of a Saturday morning meeting at Khamenei’s offices, presenting what officials viewed as an unusually opportune moment to strike alongside other senior Iranian figures.

“Turn off your cameras!”

Iran has also hacked into Israeli CCTV cameras – in Jerusalem last year, Bloomberg reported that Iran was using private security cameras in Israel to gather real-time intelligence.

After Iranian ballistic missiles hit high-rise buildings in Tel Aviv, a former Israeli cybersecurity official went on public radio last June to issue a stark warning: turn off your home surveillance cameras or change the password.

According to Gaby Portnoy, former Director General of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, Hamas hacked into private security cameras ahead of its October 7th, 2023, attacks on Israel.

“The intelligence gathering that Hamas did from private cameras in the Gaza periphery was a disaster,” Portnoy said in an interview.

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“Thousands of cameras were hacked over the years, both public and private, and were used to collect intelligence.”

Many cameras are vulnerable to hacking due to weak passwords, a lack of firmware updates, and poor installation.

Last year, a report by US cybersecurity ratings firm BitSight found that thousands of cameras stream online without passwords or other protections, and can be accessed by anyone.

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