But he has different concerns around Unit 8200. He’s worried injectors may be transmitting user data from across the world to Israeli servers over unencrypted HTTP connections. “What worries me is whether any of these systems might cause users to fetch data from Israeli servers over HTTP. These companies may consider themselves benign, but the Israel government is notorious for hacking and industrial espionage, and the Israeli government can use any such traffic to hack individual targets,” Weaver adds…

Even publishing information on ad injection can land users in legal trouble. Another Israeli firm, Flash Networks, appears to be injecting ad content over Airtel 3G at the network layer – a method described by Weaver as “objectionable”. According to a report from India, a local activist called Thejesh GN has been sent a cease and desist letter from the firm’s local lawyers, asking him to remove content from GitHub that showed how the injection worked. Again, some of the Flash Networks team, including its VP of research and development, spent their formative years in Unit 8200.