Recruitment can be tough if you're one of the world's most ruthless undercover agencies, whose operatives are known to disguise themselves, slip into Middle Eastern warzones and assassinate their enemies.

Now, in a highly unorthodox attempt to shake off its less-than-glittering image and attract some interest, Israel's Shin Bet has become the first secret service to set up a blog in which shadowy, unidentified staff tell their stories.

The journal, launched in Hebrew yesterday, features testimonies from four silhouetted people identified only by the first letter of their names, who update readers on their day-to-day activities.

Unsurprisingly, none of the four bloggers - who say they work in the IT department - are willing, or able, to reveal details of the targets they have assassinated, the phones they have bugged, or the informers they have recruited.

Instead - as the feared security agency tries to present itself as just another company vying for talent in one of the world's most competitive high-tech markets - they try to sound like they're in just another job.

"There are things that I can't even tell my husband in detail," writes H, a female blogger who says she is a quality assurance engineer. "But in any case, we don't like to discuss work at home."

She says that only members of her immediate family know she works for Shin Bet, adding that her offices "aren't gleaming and fashionably designed like I was used to in the world of high-tech" - but they aren't bad.

In his first post, another blogger, identified as Y, aged 34, tries to reassure readers that he's usually home by 6.30pm, and that his salary is "no worse than at any other high-tech company on the market."'

Meanwhile, A, a programming engineer, writes that he heard Shin Bet was looking for high-tech workers and imagined the fictional Counter-Terrorism Unit from the hit show 24.

"Who wouldn't want to imagine themselves working in the command-and-control centre of the CTU?" he writes. But he adds: "Though it's really unfair, I didn't get a siren to put on my car, and I too have to sit in traffic jams."

Despite its operations remaining top secret, Shin Bet is believed to have three departments - an Arab affairs wing responsible for anti-terrorism operations, believed to include undercover missions and targeted killings, a non-Arab wing for worldwide spying operations, and a department to protect Israeli government buildings and embassies.

While other worldwide security services have websites explaining what they do and advertising to prospective employees, no other security service in the world is believed to have a live blog written by operatives.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said that no such blog existed for MI6 or MI5 and that it was "highly unlikely" that security services in the UK would launch one in the near future.

Yet, so curtailed are Shin Bet employees in what they can actually say in their blog that one of the world's most exciting and dangerous careers actually begins to look... slightly boring.

In one reader response, a surfer calling herself Brandy wrote: "Maybe I've watched too many James Bond movies, but you make it sound grey and charmless."

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