Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-members-wounded-lebanon-when-pagers-exploded-sources-witnesses-2024-09-17/

by logicchains • 2 years ago

1076 2068 2 years ago

reuters.com

yamrzou• 2 years ago

Why was this flagged? I vouched for it as it would make for an interesting discussion about the security of these devices and how this kind of cyberattack might have happened.

Are smartphones, for example, also vulnerable to it?

mandmandam6• 2 years ago

Why was this flagged?

Anything any particularly motivated group dislikes here gets flagged; always been this way. Thanks for vouching.

Are smartphones, for example, also vulnerable to it?

I also would love an answer to this question. Up until 12 minutes ago, I would never have thought _blowing up_ hundreds of pagers simultaneously was a realistic scenario.

If anyone can make sense of how this actually worked I'd be grateful. If it can be done to pagers, it seems likely that it can be done to other networked lithium devices: phones, tablets, laptops, smart watches, cameras, drones, medical devices, toys, and even electric vehicles.

Lest anyone tries to deny this happened: There's video of two separate cases on the nowinpalestine Instagram page.

jakeinspace4• 2 years ago

98% sure these were booby trapped with plastic explosives or similar, meaning it’s a supply chain attack more than a cyber attack. LiPos exploding would be more sizzle and less instant boom, you can’t just hack your way through thermal runaway without all the smoke and building temperature first.

llm_nerd4• 2 years ago

"Political" (including geopolitical) posts on here lead to an enormous amount of anger and noise and I fully get why they're verboten. In this case it's actually a fascinating issue that has a lot of crossovers with the domain of this site, but invariably the conversation would get overwhelmed with geopolitical noise instead of just focusing on the technical aspects.

HocusLocus• 2 years ago

I am just out of the gate, but the videos show sharp percussive explosions and no lithium evidence. So C4 or RDX in the devices on a 'mod board' with the explosive disguised as a big capacitor or something. It had to be put into the devices. In order to justify an operation like this the explosions had to be near-simultaneous so the mod board had to have its own clock, which would be as accurate as the crystal in the clock circuit provides, maybe drift of +/- a few seconds since installation.

The broadcast pager network does not offer this level of time precision for a detonation message so as ugly as it sounds, I believe at the moment that 9/17/2024@3:30pm (or whatever) was preloaded into the 'mod boards'.

Perhaps the 'mod board' had the capability for the future time to be set with a broadcast message, but that introduces such complexity! It requires the page system itself to be compromised. The victims' paranoia served them badly in this case, a recent warning about cell devices and a lower tech 'solution' is rolled out and they would only trust one source, so all you'd have to do was get an explody batch into the supply chain with (reasonable) assurance that only Hezbollah members would get them.

In the coming days I'd look for clues in: The simultaneity of the explosions with times to the second // were any duds found and disassembled? // is there a separate radio receiver on the mod board (to set future detonation time) // when did the 'rollout' of the devices begin? // How many pager carrying non-members were injured and what were the circumstances ('medics' being one group) // Will suspicious broadcasts be discovered from logs or logged radio intercepts?

Given the people we are dealing with (I mean both sides) I am thinking that the operation avoided ANY covert channels at all and was a simple date-time bomb.

hollerith5• 2 years ago

Are smartphones, for example, also vulnerable to it?

Yes if Israeli intelligence gets their hands on your smartphone (probably before you buy it) and installs an explosive and a software-hardware back door.

mandmandam6• 2 years ago

I've seen laptop and phone batteries explode with significant force on YouTube. It's called thermal runaway.

As much as I'd love to believe this couldn't happen without physical tampering, I see no good reason to.

menomatter• 2 years ago

even that is not far fetched. This is a typical supply chain attack.

FridayoLeary8• 2 years ago

The subject is unfortunately likely to start a flamewar. I still think this should be on the front page because the technology and scope of this attack is unheard of if true. Israel somehow managed to weaponise hezbolla pagers by sending a message that caused them to explode. (Edit: i see the link i submitted has made it to the front page so it seems the moderators won't kill the story)

andreasley• 2 years ago

I was wondering the same thing.

There might be other explanations than a cyberattack though. The pagers could have been prepared in some way before distribution.

From the videos, it looks like the explosions were quite sudden and remarkably violent for such a small device.

So in addition to people-hunting FPV drones, we now have the equivalent of exploding collars from science fiction movies like Running Man. I don't like where we're heading, but it was probably inevitable that technology would be used this way.

tamimio6• 2 years ago

As mentioned in this thread by others, this is not a new attack vector and won’t be the last. The only difference is the scale. And technically speaking, anything can be weaponized.

qwertox• 2 years ago

Dupes also get flagged, like in this case. This submission got [dupe] added as a prefix to he title.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41567573

nhggfu• 2 years ago

any indication which brand(s) of pagers were in use?

anonss3• 2 years ago

The latest versions just exploded; not sure about the brands though

oldgradstudent2• 2 years ago

I saw a speculation on r/lebanon:

https://www.gapollo.com.tw/rugged-pager-ar924/

I can't find the link now, but it was based on an image of the back of burned pager.

Edit: wayback machine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240529091558/https://www.gapol...

tamimio6• 2 years ago

It does look like this one, the page doesn’t open so J assume it’s the page.

TiredOfLife4• 2 years ago

The ones that had explosives put into them.

bell-cot2• 2 years ago

Obvious #1 Question - did Mossad manage to feed Hezbollah a huge number of weaponized pagers - or are there pagers which could be rooted in such a way that the stock hardware can "detonate"?

beardyw• 2 years ago

For standard pager I can only imagine perhaps some way to short the battery, but that sounds unlikely even as I write it.

bell-cot2• 2 years ago

Yep. Though maybe with really-low-quality (safety-wise) batteries, and the description "detonate" being 99.9% journalistic hype...maybe?

HarryHirsch2• 2 years ago

This hack is the best argument against network-connected electric vehicles that there is. Imagine the same, but with tens of thousands of Teslas.

mandmandam6• 2 years ago

Not to mention phones, laptops, tables, smart watches, medical devices, children's toys, etc.

lm2846915• 2 years ago

That's exactly why the "software hack" doesn't make any sense

No battery powered gadget as ever exploded like that ever

That's a battery explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR7_xwQbYp0

That's a bomb: https://x.com/DrEliDavid/status/1836037485492629605

LinuxBender2• 2 years ago

I don't think it would be quite the same as in explosive ordinance put into a device but it is very similar in that a mass hack could use the navigation system to target pedestrians and calculate the speed required to plow through them without losing control to maximize victim count. All that would be required in another remote hack as has been demonstrated on live highways in the past [1] combined with some form of AI or gaming engine. A mitigating control could be more bollards near sidewalks and more hydraulic bollards on intersections that have a lot of foot traffic to confine the hacks to smaller blast zones. This won't protect the occupants but maybe drive by wire car manufacturers could start adding a "oh crap" manual handle to physically disengage power and apply some type of physical friction brake.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZVYTJarPFs [video][2 mins]

Log_out_• 2 years ago

Not one backdoor? not even for the blues?

colechristensen2• 2 years ago

A parking garage full of electric vehicles properly compromised (at least some of them) would be very ... energetic. Burning lithium batteries aren't precisely explosive, but they are still very angry. It is plausible that you could destroy a building with a chain reaction of battery fires. That is one of the safety concerns I think might not yet be fully accounted for (what happens when a bunch of electric cars are in a full closed lot and one of them starts on fire).

tavavex• 2 years ago

maybe drive by wire car manufacturers could start adding a "oh crap" manual handle to physically disengage power and apply some type of physical friction brake

It depends on the manufacturer, but I think this is already the case with Tesla cars? The brake specifically isn't drive-by-wire, it's an electrically assisted hydraulic brake - so even if a malicious actor could get the car to not do the assist part anymore, you can still stop by pressing the pedal hard.

I feel like bollards and other form of separating roads from pedestrians are unviable on the large scale. I hope manufacturers start focusing more on sandboxing any internet-connected parts of their software and leaving the whole car-driving part inaccessible from any of that.

some_random5• 2 years ago

It's almost certainly 15 grams of RDX.

1970-01-01• 2 years ago

Yes, some kind of Semtex or C-4 would fit the application

ghastmaster• 2 years ago

It's worth noting that RDX requires a detonator. This requires more space in the device.

diggan8• 2 years ago

Not sure why this was flagged, it's certainly a novel way of striking the enemy, regardless of the political undertones.

Reuters seems to have a bit more details, and is probably a bit less biased than current URL (timesofisrael.com): https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-m...

mytailorisrich• 2 years ago

What's definitely novel is the scale, perhaps not the tactic, which has been used many times before (speculative assumption being that the devices were tempered with)

__alexs• 2 years ago

It's not especially novel, it's just a lot of similar weapons systems (e.g. cluster bombs, anti personnel landmines) are banned these days.

fra• 2 years ago

This may be the first widely reported deadly hack of a connected device. Wild times we live in.

upcoming-sesame2• 2 years ago

https://x.com/WachtelDan/status/1836038754756145515

Footage from the hospital

HeadlessChild• 2 years ago

That is some wild and scary stuff.

algo_trader• 2 years ago

The affected pagers were from a new shipment .. in recent days
some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hundreds-of-hezbollah-...

lbeltrame• 2 years ago

Question for those with more knowledge on these devices: how can they detonate? The batteries?

gomezjdaniel• 2 years ago

It could be they had a way to warm up the batteries until these explode

mapt2• 2 years ago

The batteries are the only major energy storage device there to breach.

Clearly Israel has found a software vulnerability that lets them overload some otherwise minimally used processor and overheat the batteries. Above ~140f lithium ion cells go into thermal runaway.

daedrdev2• 2 years ago

It seems like they actually installed small bombs in the devices.

tiagod• 2 years ago

How is it so clear to you?

danbruc5• 2 years ago

This article [1] has an image of the pager and a video supposedly showing one exploding in the bag of some guy while shopping groceries. From that I would suspect a supply chain attack integrating some explosive, that seems way too violent for just an exploding battery or anything else you would usually find in that kind of device.

[1] https://realrepublic.com/encrypted-hezbollah-pagers-simultan...

h2odragon2• 2 years ago

they had to have had some extra components added: batteries won't pop like that, they haven't that much energy.

h2odragon2• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/l6dpE

one video: https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1836039436653519209

o999• 2 years ago

Primary news suggests its an Israeli cyberattack

bhouston4• 2 years ago

Cyberattack or supply chain attack? Who uses pagers? So a supply chain attack could have been the cause.

vpol• 2 years ago

could be both

piva002• 2 years ago

I doubt it's just a cyberattack, the videos of the explosions indicate small explosives rather than batteries.

Don't think we'll know exactly what happened until Israel tells the world or an independent investigation concludes but so far my impression is there was a supply chain infiltration and thousands of pagers with explosives have been distributed to Hezbollah.

mzmzmzm• 2 years ago

Is there a pager model sophisticated enough to accept remote firmware updates (or whatever condition for a software exploit) but lacking a battery protection IC? Otherwise wouldn't sabotage elsewhere in the chain be more likely?

danbruc5• 2 years ago

It was most likely a supply chain attack integrating explosives into the pagers, this article [1] says the affected devices were from a recent shipment. The explosions are way too violent for malfunctioning batteries.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hundreds-of-hezbollah-...

anonss3• 2 years ago

It was surprising tbh. Someone said on the news that they tried to control the short circuit and increase the voltage which made batteries explode??

netsharc2• 2 years ago

It must be a combination of hardware (put a bomb in it) and software (trigger an explosion when a particular command is received) hack. Triggering an explosion of all devices is needed because if people started hearing about exploding pagers, they'd place their own far away from anything precious to them.

Geez, I thought this kind of hack is the stuff of (bad) action movies.

I wonder if there's a pager that was powered off during the attack and if somebody will dissect how they did it.

Edit: then again maybe the code is as simple as

    if (currentTime() >= KABOOM_TIME) { goKaboom(); }

flutas4• 2 years ago

I doubt it has anything to do with the battery, pagers typically use the far more stable (and less energy dense) NiMH composition over a typical lithium one.

pythonguython2• 2 years ago

Most pagers also aren’t designed incinerate/explode when they receive a signal, so I don’t know if we can make assumptions based on what typical pagers do. Seems a lot easier to short a LiPo battery than conceal a tiny explosive. An explosive can be found, but they’re unlikely to find out that the BMS is bugged to short the battery to ground

himinlomax2• 2 years ago

It's probably much easier these days to source lithium batteries than NiMH ones.

bee_rider2• 2 years ago

Hypothetically there could be scenarios where something as simple as control over the right NTP servers could trigger that code, right? I

some_random5• 2 years ago

The detonation signal could also have been completely out of band, like with Yahya Ayyash (as far as I know) which seems like the Occam's Razor answer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash#Assassination

hhh3• 2 years ago

They’re pagers, so it could also be a modification of the firmware to listen for a certain message (could it be as simple as a pocsag network where all of the pagers would get every message and only alert if it’s targeted for them?)

moduspol4• 2 years ago

Cheap cell phones have been used as detonators for quite some time.

ars11• 2 years ago

I saw some videos of explosions, the pagers received some sort of signal or message that made the holder look at the pager.

Most of the injuries were to the hands or eyes. It was a very very weak explosion - even people right next to the person were not harmed, just the person holding the pager.

delichon2• 2 years ago

Warning, under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations in the US civil fines of up to $500k per violation apply to software exports classified as related to munitions or military applications. You may want to consult an attorney before sharing such algorithms on a public forum.

tptacek41• 2 years ago

Well, James Mickens sure called this one.

jgrahamc• 2 years ago

Could you explain for the uninitiated?

tptacek41• 2 years ago

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf

pbronez• 2 years ago

"""

In the real world, threat models are much simpler (see Figure 1). Basically, you’re either dealing with Mossad or not-Mossad. If your adversary is not-Mossad, then you’ll probably be fine if you pick a good pass-word and don’t respond to emails from ChEaPestPAiNPi11s@virus-basket.biz.ru. If your adversary is the Mossad, YOU’RE GONNA DIE AND THERE’S NOTHING THAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. The Mossad is not intimidated by the fact that you employ https://. If the Mossad wants your data, they’re going to use a drone to replace your cellphone with a piece of uranium that’s shaped like a cellphone, and when you die of tumors filled with tumors, they’re going to hold a press conference and say “It wasn’t us” as they wear t-shirts that say “IT WAS DEFINITELY US,” and then they’re going to buy all of your stuff at your estate sale so that they can directly look at the photos of your vacation instead of reading your insipid emails about them.

"""

Pretty wild that this mentions a mobile device supply chain attack explicitly.

MattPalmer1086• 2 years ago

Ah yes, the Mossad / Non Mossad threat model :). Classic.

dadrian• 2 years ago

Nah, it's like how the existence of Star Trek influences future development of technology. Did Mickens call it, or did the Mossad get the idea from Mickens?

Circlecrypto2• 2 years ago

I'd love a technical write up on how this is possible. Is it RF based or the battery being exploited?

bluescrn6• 2 years ago

"Intelligence agency intercepts batch of pagers and swaps out the internals" seems the most likely.

If the footage on Twitter is legit, there was something more explosive than a battery inside those pagers.

mminer2374• 2 years ago

Israel infiltrated the supply chain and inserted a bomb into the device configured to be detonated 3 seconds after a specific message is received. Then they waited x months and sent the page.

itissid• 2 years ago

How is this possible? Are they overclocking the MPUs and just heating the batteries to the point of explosion?

scandox2• 2 years ago

Surely just supply chain infiltration and regular explosives no?

scttwk• 2 years ago

Agreed, the story mentions that the exploded models were all the latest ones purchased in recent months

lsllc• 2 years ago

Wouldn't this be too easy to detect -- for example tripping airport security (or other X-ray security systems, govt. buildings etc).

bluescrn6• 2 years ago

These appear to be actual explosions, not battery combustion (there's footage on Twitter of at least one of them going off, it's a detonation rather than intense burning)

Definitely some non-standard internals in those devices...

pogue2• 2 years ago

Can you share a link to the Twitter post? If it's graphic, please mention so.

matltc3• 2 years ago

Guessing they compromised the devices with a firmware backdoor, perhaps to remotely trigger an exploit that heats up the devices battery to dangerous levels once a signal is received. Paranoid about this happening with my vape mod with two 18650 cells

kwhitefoot• 2 years ago

That's enough to vaporise about 100 g of water according my back of the envelope calculations. Overkill? Or is modified for an entirely different purpose?

Sharlin• 2 years ago

More likely this has nothing to do with the batteries and this batch of pagers was physically intercepted and rigged with actual explosives. A very concrete example of a supply chain attack.

matltc3• 2 years ago

Could be true but that requires a lot more steps. Need the materiel to be implanted, delivered to targets, then have a software payload execute, instead of just the last step. However, most battery packs for pagers im seeing are 650 mAh which isn't much energy at all. Two 18650s have almost ten times as much capacity, and they don't explode.

gee_totes• 2 years ago

Maybe a dumb question, but I wonder if this was a software attack or IL was able to modify the physical pagers that are issued during Hezbollah onboarding. If this was a pure software attack, are only pagers susceptible? Or are we unknowingly carrying around bombs in our pocket, waiting for the counterattack?

mminer2374• 2 years ago

They 100% had a explosive added inside. Batteries cannot explode like that.

diggan8• 2 years ago

Assuming a lithium battery and control over the firmware+power draw, couldn't you theoretically make the battery output more charge than safe, leading to at least overheating and maybe more?

I also find it unlikely this was just a remote attack rather than supply chain, but with little to no details we can only assume for now.

wing-_-nuts2• 2 years ago

There's no way the little battery in a pager has enough energy to do this. This is a 'supply chain attack' by the Israelis. An ingenious one at that.

aitchnyu• 2 years ago

Why waste it on a clever show instead of stalking their owners silently?

dredmorbius10• 2 years ago

NB: that's probably backwards. Batteries contain a lot of energy, they just don't release it particularly quickly.

Most explosives have relatively low energy density, however the energy they have is released far faster than with conventional fuels. By unit mass, TNT (or other comparable explosives such as C4, RDX, etc.) have about 1/10th the energy as liquid petroleum fuels (petrol, diesel, kerosene).

Though again most battery technologies also have fairly low energy densities. But those are probably roughly comparable with most mainstream explosives.

TNT has an energy density of 4.184 MJ/kg.

A LiON battery: 0.36–0.875 MJ/kg.

Motorola pagers (a widely used type) seem to typically take a 3.5V 500mAh battery, which if I'm doing my conversions correctly (mAh * V * 3.6) works out to about 23 kilojoule. That would be the energy equivalent of ~5g TNT. A light charge, but one you wouldn't want going off on your hip.

(Note: I've corrected an off-by-an-order-of-1,000 error above, earlier read 23 MJ / 180g TNT. As I said, I'm not entirely certain of my calculations, which are using the Wikipedia energy densities noted and GNU Units.)

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density>

Again, batteries won't explode as footage of the presumed Israeli attack on Hezbolla members shows. But they do contain appreciable energy. It would more likely burn rapidly at worst case.

rtkwe2• 2 years ago

If the description of "exploding" and "tearing [a] bag to shreds" are accurate then it has to be a physical modification of the pagers, lithium ion batteries don't explode with a lot of force when they go up.

krisoft2• 2 years ago

There are CCTV videos purported to show some of the explosions: https://x.com/warfareanalysis/status/1836041245996584983

It is indeed not the kind of explosion I would expect to see from lithium ion. (Those usually are a lot more flame-y at least the ones I have seen so far.). But I'm not an expert.

AlbertCory• 2 years ago

If you put yourself in the position of Hezbollah's IT chief, you get a different picture than this question assumes.

Let's assume you're somewhat competent and aware of supply chain vulnerabilities.

Let's also assume that pagers are not that popular anymore, and you insist on a pager that's completely passive. It can't emit any signals at all, or the Mossad would track it.

So you probably find some supplier of gear to the Iranians and other non-Western countries, and give them your specifications. That supplier is reliable, you think. It probably listens to a signal that Hez and only Hez transmits. It's Security By Obscurity, the choice of naive buyers everywhere.

You certainly don't buy anything off the shelf. Well, we know what's wrong with Security By Obscurity: Mossad only has to decipher one secret.

ajsnigrutin3• 2 years ago

This is going to be an interesting one... definitely someone (not a lot of guessing who) modified the pagers somewhere in the supply chain...

As with exploding drones, this will become a thing in other countries too, either as a part of organized crime or general terrorism.

anonu4• 2 years ago

Another working theory is that it could just be an opportunistic cyber attack - compromising lithium batteries. Though some of the videos coming out look like a bigger explosion that just a battery going off: https://www.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/1fizgag/ha_member_...

ajsnigrutin3• 2 years ago

Nah, batteries don't explode like that... heat, burst of fire somewhere, sure... full on explosion, no way. This was done somewhere in the supply chain, devices were replaced, explosives were added.

And israel will wonder why suddenly even more lebanonis want to fight them after.

c0rn3l1us• 2 years ago

It's just a matter of knowing your battery's power management firmware. You can overload the power control circuits that pagers or smartphones by creating a massive surge (sending signals to the IGBT drivers) that will cause the battery to explode. If the battery is moderately charged, the explosion is devastating. Hacker teams from the notorious Israeli ShinBet know of many bugs of this type.

anonss3• 2 years ago

But how did just that specific software model explode and not the previous ones? Shouldn’t your case apply to all models then?

glenstein• 2 years ago

Other comments here are suggesting it was more likely a real explosive put in as part of a physical supply chain attack. Anyone able to say which is more plausible?

oldgradstudent2• 2 years ago

The WSJ report claims that:

The official said some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them before they burst.

Sounds more like a battery explosion, but it's way too early to tell.

jonplackett• 2 years ago

newer reports saying 1000s not 100s

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...

gwervc• 2 years ago

More than 1,000 people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics

The CNN title implies that only Hezbollah members were targeted were reality seems different. It's crazy a country is capable of doing a "special security operation" on civilians of another country without any international sanctions.

hersko5• 2 years ago

If it was targeting pagers used for Hezbollah's internal communication then it would be justified, no?

xdennis3• 2 years ago

Hezbollah are a paramilitary group at best, not civilians. And they are designated terrorists in many countries.

viraptor3• 2 years ago

So either this was planned long enough ago to replace a large number of devices over time, or communication about a larger order has been provided to the enemy and fulfilled without suspicion. Either way, that sounds like a crazy infiltration effort.

Also, we can assume that anything sent to those pagers so far has been forwarded to Israel and now that channel is burned, right?

RIMR2• 2 years ago

The reports right now are that these were ordinary pagers and that some sort of software attack overloaded the batteries and caused them to explode.

But I work lithium batteries. I've overloaded lithium batteries before and let them explode for safety testing. The videos released of these things exploding on people doesn't look anything like what I would expect, especially not from something as small as a pager battery. You would need to seal lithium batteries in a metal tube or something to cause that kind of explosion.

I highly suspect that this was a supply chain attack, and that there's a high explosive charge hidden in these things, with some sort of radio backdoor that allows them to be detonated by whoever controls these things.

lm2846915• 2 years ago

The reports right now ...

Propaganda is running at 400% on both sides, I wouldn't trust anything, especially not "we just hacked pagers and made them explode via software"

RIMR2• 2 years ago

Yeah, I'm getting the same energy from that claim as this: https://dtrap-blog.acm.org/2019/09/04/hackers-can-turn-your-...

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

Was going to ask how common pagers were, but suppose still used by emergency services etc and especially in warzones of questionable cell network reliability

drcode• 2 years ago

also make it hard to triangulate your location

bewaretheirs3• 2 years ago

Hezbollah reportedly bans its members from carrying cell phones and has them carry pagers instead:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pagers-drones-how-...

aenis• 2 years ago

Thats an interesting attack vector on its own. Who does not regularly carry a phone with them these days?

bluescrn6• 2 years ago

That was a mistake. If they'd gone for the thinnest smartphone they could buy, there'd be no chance of anybody hiding a small bomb inside it.

bee_rider2• 2 years ago

Although, if I was an intelligence agency or police force, I’d definitely give pagers a second look, right? Like they have uses but somebody picking a pager over a cellphone is doing something unusual—maybe something unusual and good, like running an emergency services organization, but still unusual enough to take a second look.

JPLeRouzic• 2 years ago

Is it some device like this one?

https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/ied/pager-bomb-rcied

It's disgusting that humans can invent such devices.

wiradikusuma• 2 years ago

Does anyone have a footage?

mminer2374• 2 years ago

https://x.com/DrEliDavid/status/1836037485492629605

rideontime• 2 years ago

Revolting to see the replies cheering for the "wailing terrorist" who was just restocking produce.

andyjohnson0• 2 years ago

The affected pagers were from a new shipment that Hezbollah had received in recent days, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by the Wall Street Journal.

Presumably someone, likely Israel, intercepted them before they got to Hezbollah and added an explosive payload that could be remotely triggered.

Hard to see how a remote exploit could detonate the battery, which was my initial thought.

msq• 2 years ago

Hard to see how a remote exploit could detonate the battery

If that is the case - we have a problem...

flutas4• 2 years ago

Hard to see how a remote exploit could detonate the battery

Especially seeing as pagers typically use more stable NiMH batteries over lithium ones.

lm2846915• 2 years ago

It wouldn't be a first

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash

Shin Bet agents gave him a cell phone and told him it was bugged so they could listen in on his conversations.[17] They did not tell him that it also contained 15 grams of RDX explosive

busterarm5• 2 years ago

Cell phones were much bigger in 1996. You would have a hard time with that with phones today, but pagers are still viable.

lm2846915• 2 years ago

Replace half the battery with c4, you really don't need much to injure someone in direct contact with a modern explosive

https://youtu.be/OOWcTV2nEkU?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/LrUY8QbEcpM?feature=shared

TheBen12• 2 years ago

I imagine technological progress has been made in the field of explosives as well. I guess the volume and weight can very very small when you can determine that the phone is being held at the head and the explosion can partially be directed to it. Maybe it's even possible to leverage the energy within the battery?

bgschulman31• 2 years ago

This is a pretty amazing exploit by the attackers. Either they had access to the pagers during shipment and installed malware or had access to RCE on the devices.

pogue2• 2 years ago

Israel has done this in the past by supplying parts to Iran for printers that would explode https://apnews.com/article/iran-israel-ballistic-missile-sab...

I also seem to recall them using modified cell phones to blow up militants or use them to triangulate their location. I can't seem to find the article(s) about this, unfortunately.

siva7• 2 years ago

Seems like the israeli knew who these devices were addressed for, intercepted them and added explosives.

scohesc• 2 years ago

The videos I've seen definitely look like it was more than a battery explosion - very high energy...

Wondering if the pagers were intercepted and implanted with heat-sensitive explosive?

The NSA has planted custom chips/firmware inside cisco routers after intercepting them - it's not a large jump to go to explosives inside pagers.

elric• 2 years ago

I read somewhere that these were likely Motorola devices. Does that mean they are complicit in adding explosives to their pagers (wtf?) or is Mossad conducting supply chain attacks on such a massive scale? How do they ensure only the right pagers explode? Or did they randomly blow up a bunch of innocent pager users?

ummonk6• 2 years ago

It's absurd that this was flagged and pushed off the front page. Either it was a supply chain attack with explosives installed, or this was a hack that caused battery explosion. Either way this is extremely relevant to Hacker News.

Neil44• 2 years ago

This is true, however I can also accept that a thread on this is going to descend into a shit show.

toomuchtodo2• 2 years ago

Hopefully mods wake up soon, I want the technical gory details without the gory convo. If this is legit, it is going to be a fascinating post mortem.

hammock• 2 years ago

@dang

Bluescreenbuddy• 2 years ago

So no one has a credible source on how and why the exploded? Because the mostly likely answer is they were intercepted and rigged with explosives

581786• 2 years ago

This being a hack is improbable in my opinion. If you see the pictures of the aftermath, the damage is too big to be the result of a lithium battery explosion. Moreover the devices exploded at the same time in different locations (won’t happen if they made the battery overheat till explosion) HA probably bought a bad batch with implanted explosives and they set it off now.

tamimio6• 2 years ago

Pretty much, yeah. The hack was used only to activate it remotely, and in pager systems, it should not be a hard task. But I highly doubt it was only due to battery overheating. I have seen scooter batteries exploding before, and they don’t burst as quickly as this one.

wut428• 2 years ago

I tend to agree with you. However it has been said (from wsj article) that "some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them".

bluescrn6• 2 years ago

There's footage on Twitter showing an actual detonation, with a bang. Not a huge blast (the man falls to the ground injured, but bystanders seemed unharmed). Definitely not the rapid burning 'whoosh' of a battery fire.

anonu4• 2 years ago

This being a hack is improbable

Your definition of hack differs from mine. This is hack in every sense of the word: supply chain hack, signals hack, and more...

akira2501• 2 years ago

A nation state used it's awesome power to steal something that wasn't theirs and then altered it. This is not a hack. It's just brute force.

npteljes• 2 years ago

The context clearly explains what OP means. The meaning is that "This is not something that is achieved via simply hacking a normal device remotely. This is something that is achieved via doing something extra to the device first, and maybe then hacking it remotely."

Another thing is that if we begin to use "hack" for every means of attack and unauthorized access, then the word loses its meaning. There is no supply chain hack, but there is a supply chain attack.

csomar3• 2 years ago

Can we have this thread back and make it strictly technical?

dredmorbius10• 2 years ago

Email mods at hn@ycombinator.com if you see a pervasive violation of HN's comment guidelines.

Flagging and voting also help, but for wildly out-of-control threads, direct contact is more reliable.

rsync• 2 years ago

No.

The discussion should meander in any direction the votes and scoring allow it to.

If the voting supports it, it is on topic ipso facto.

robot_no_421• 2 years ago

Not at all, that's why we have moderators. Hacker news is interesting because they stay focused on the right topics. If you let people just talk about whatever they want, you're just gonna get an inferior Reddit. Topic != "Whatever we want to talk about", the topic is very often the technical and technological aspects of a story or article. Talking about politics on HN is definitely "off topic".

giraffe_lady• 2 years ago

Love to consider only the technical aspect of terrorist attacks that's what makes this News for Hackers yes.

sys32768• 2 years ago

Sounds like Israel added plastic explosives to pagers and managed to supply them to Hezbollah. Then, I assume, they triggered only those pagers belonging to known operatives. I'm guessing some did not explode and we'll get to see the device inside and possibly understand the mechanism.

tguvot2• 2 years ago

not unprecedented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash#Assassination

myth_drannon3• 2 years ago

That one was a bomb, today's attack was by heating the lithium battery.

tguvot2• 2 years ago

nobody knows what happened today.

IG_Semmelweiss6• 2 years ago

One aspect here that is not commented on but has long-term security implications:

Assuming these were indeed Hezbollah devices, its likely every single Hezbollah operative now has an identifying wound, possibly a missing limb or wound at the hip level. The wound may be in fact, unmistakable.

What happens later with the lebanese armed forces and with IDF, when they see the ops in the open, its anyone's guess

repelsteeltje3• 2 years ago

I might be misinterpreting, but news coverage seems to say that Hezbollah fighters as well as medical personnel were injured. That might mean that the attack was aimed at pagers rather than Hezbollah pagers.

Such lack of precision would be what you'd expect in any kind of operation targeting so many devices.

lovelearning• 2 years ago

Those medical personnel may also be members of Hezbollah. Doctors, nurses, and emergency responders can have ideological beliefs. For example, in my country, there are medical personnel with far-right and extremist views, some even holding leadership positions in such ideological organizations.

317070• 2 years ago

There will be better experts here, but it is correct that batteries cannot explode like this, right?

amelius2• 2 years ago

Given the amount of foreign EVs already in this country, let's hope not.

busterarm5• 2 years ago

Pager networks are 100% clear text. If you're stupid enough to be using them to coordinate operations in 2024, I feel like you kind of deserve whatever happens to you.

You're telling me nobody in Hezbollah watched The Wire?

wut428• 2 years ago

You can use cyphertext inside the plaintext. Seems to be what they are doing.

busterarm5• 2 years ago

You still have the metadata of sender and receiver. Your whole network is exposed.

Also your message limits are 200 characters and likely highly susceptible to correlation attacks.

DonaldFisk• 2 years ago

A possible explanation of how it happened: https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/lebanon-news/796406/understandi...

tamimio6• 2 years ago

I highly doubt that it’s a result of hacking the battery power management. Lithium batteries don’t explode the way I have seen these pagers do so far. They usually smoke or start catching fire before they explode due to overheating, which should’ve given enough time to dispose of them. But what happened is sudden and strong. Definitely, something extra was added and was activated remotely later.

4ad• 2 years ago

Footage of explosions: https://x.com/cherylwroteit/status/1836041510233444404

From the hospital (NSFW): https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1836052147646955935

I am very surprised Hezbollah didn't think of supply chain security and didn't do the most cursor inspection of these devices. The post mortem would be very interesting on this one.

harimau7777• 2 years ago

This seems like it would have the potential for a lot of collateral damage due to the possibility that modified pagers might enter general distribution. That is to say, how do they insure that a given shipment of pagers are only going to Hezbollah as opposed to some of them going to people like aid workers?

tptacek41• 2 years ago

Who uses pagers? Aid workers carry phones. The pagers are deliberate opsec move for Hezbollah.

8organicbits3• 2 years ago

I've used them for DevOps on-call in the last ten years in the US, as a backup to phone-based alerts. It's far too easy to mess up phone DND settings, forget to charge a phone, be outside cell service, or leave a phone in the wrong room. The pager had a long battery life and I clipped it to my pants waistband. I definitely caught pages via the pager that I would have missed over the phone.

If you're worried about the cell network going down, they serve as a backup comms device as well since they use different infrastructure.

ineedasername15• 2 years ago

For collateral, I was thinking more along the lines of non-Hezbollah civilians right next to the target, or perhaps a building set on fire

nicbou• 2 years ago

Nurses and medical staff, at least in the US.

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/15/1219737658/why-do-doctors-sti...

jjtheblunt• 2 years ago

not sure of band allocations around israel, but in the US pagers were long wavelength devices and, as such, could receive signals much further inside buildings than pre-wifi cellular bands could reach. again, band / frequency (wavelength) allocation dependent. but if similar there, pagers might get signals in tunnels whereas cellular bands may not, for one plausible conjecture.

minkles8• 2 years ago

I suspect that is an intentional side effect against the whole pager network. It is now totally compromised which means they can no longer use passive channels as a communication medium. This effectively shut down their comms structure.

As for aid workers, they mostly use whatever low ball android phones they can get their hands on I know someone who volunteered out there and everyone uses them and Telegram). I don't think that will impact them at all.

isoprophlex3• 2 years ago

Well, now that everyone knows it's feasible to hide a small bomb inside a pager, what's to stop people from checking their pagers for tiny explosives before using them?

flyinglizard5• 2 years ago

These are pagers connected to Hizbollah's internal communication network. Why would they be used by the general population?

harimau7777• 2 years ago

As I understand it, people are saying that the most likely way that this was carried out was that a shipment of pagers where intercepted and modified. My concern is that part or all of the shipment might not go to Hezbollah. Perhaps the shipment gets rerouted to somewhere else due to supply chain issues. Perhaps only half of the shipment was intended for Hezbollah. Perhaps a postal worker steals a few and sells them on the black market. Perhaps Hezbollah decides they have more than they needs and does something with the rest. Perhaps part or all of the shipment gets delayed and is sitting in a post office when it goes off.

Basically: warfare via mail bomb seems like it might be irresponsible.

alistairSH4• 2 years ago

These aren't normal retail pagers, like the world uses (or used to use) for pager-duty? And Hezbollah maintains its own network infrastructure?

sudosysgen10• 2 years ago

Hezbollah is essentially a governmental organization, they provide healthcare, education, agricultural infrastructure, social services, etc...

scosman• 2 years ago

They killed an 8 year old girl with this attack. I'm sure there was already a huge amount of collateral damage from 2000+ eyes-off-taret explosions.

elorant3• 2 years ago

Pagers could have certain security options that would interest only a military organization. We don't know at which stage these were intercepted. They could just as easily be targeted to Hezbollah from the beginning of the sale. Advertise something that could be catered to them and once they take the bait go ahead and booby trap them all

jjk1664• 2 years ago

It would be easy to include a little microcontroller that can check what frequency the pager is set to. This allows you to target specific pager networks (government, military) while leaving pagers that are unlikely to be in use by targets intact for follow-up attacks.

mathandstuff• 2 years ago

They didn't. Al Jazeera's headline was updated to read "Lebanon’s health minister says 8 killed, 2,750 wounded by exploding pagers."

moduspol4• 2 years ago

I'm not sure why it's being assumed that they detonated all of the pagers. They presumably have unique device IDs / phone numbers that can be tied to individual people. For all we know, they may have just detonated the ones known to be in use by Hezbollah operatives.

limit499karma2• 2 years ago

You can't insure it. It is actual terrorism, pure and simple.

"American University of Beirut withdrew the pagers from the medical staff this morning under the pretext of updating the system".

aksss3• 2 years ago

You can insure anything.

knallfrosch3• 2 years ago

First: Innocent people can use their phones just fine and have their comms intercepted by the IDF. Only Hezbollah wanted an alternative to hackable phones.

Second: If you distribute to Hezbollah and detonate already months later, it's unlikely many unaffiliated people already have Hezbollah pagers.

The hit rate indicates the targeting was right.

hanshenning• 2 years ago

These pagers were used by Hizbullah because, unlike mobile phones, they cannot be tracked. The people who had them were certainly not random aid workers, but people in the Hizbullah chain of command. This is also indicated by the statements of Hizbullah itself (which are themself to be questioned and not taken at face value), according to which so far one non-combatant was reported killed and no other non-combatant were reported injured out of a total of 4,000 exploded explosive devices. The CCTV footage also shows that even in a crowded supermarket, no one was injured apart from the Hizbullah member with the pager.

HL33tibCe73• 2 years ago

Since when has Israel cared about civilians or aid workers

alex11383• 2 years ago

Since the IDF has been shown to be intentionally cautious in their persecution of this war

matltc3• 2 years ago

I searched 'pager batteries' on Amazon and most are NiMH, not lithium.

CommanderData2• 2 years ago

Sucks to be them, why they even use pagers is laughable, unencrypted or encrypted. Cell infrastructure is easily traceable.

I just feel sorry for the innocent lives involved in all of this, no one deserves to be caught up in either side of the conflict.

mschuster913• 2 years ago

Sucks to be them, why they even use pagers is laughable, unencrypted or encrypted. Cell infrastructure is easily traceable.

That's the point why they're using pagers: pagers are passive only. A cellphone can guide a rocket to its target, a pager just listens and cannot be used to guide a rocket, to act as a listening bug or confirm someone's presence (or absence).

CommanderData2• 2 years ago

Interesting, never knew this. Do modern pagers transmit any RF at all?

sbeam• 2 years ago

If we try to do what we are best at here at HN, let’s focus the discussion on the technical aspects of it.

It immediately reminded me of Stuxnet, which also from a technical perspective was quite interesting.

I already wonder if this was anything that was planted in the devices perviously, or if the ones responsible had similar devices, and managed reverse engineer them and craft a payload to them, that could be sent over existing cellular protocols/networks and then, similar to Stuxnet, make the device exagerte some existing functionality to a point where it caused a malfunction? Thoughts on this?

some_random5• 2 years ago

We can't really do much more than speculate right now, but it seems like the most likely answer is that a shipment of pagers was intercepted and implanted with explosives. Israel has done this before to assassinate a prominent bomb maker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash#Assassination

minkles8• 2 years ago

Exactly that. There is a video of a hole blown through a table surface with one. That is not happening with any off the shelf battery technology as is currently being heavily misreported. They were modified with explosives clearly.

Of course there is paranoia being sewn now about hacking and the batteries which is likely part of the ongoing operation as it will disrupt anyone they didn't explicitly target.

rtaylorgarlock• 2 years ago

Exactly. Snowball's chance anyone could get a series of capacitors and transistor to do too much more than "let the smoke out," even with the largest influx of EM energy. Most batteries give pretty big warnings before they do anything close to explode, making this a pretty obvious 'attack' vector they utilized. I'm also happy to offer political opinions for anyone that wants to hear ;)

cowthulhu• 2 years ago

Kamil Hamad disappeared and it is rumored that he received US$1 million, a fake passport and a visa to the US.

Given the chain of events detailed already sounds like it was ripped from a spy novel, I'm pretty skeptical of this claim.

wkat424212• 2 years ago

Ahh so a simple supply chain attack. I was thinking it might have leveraged the built in batteries. But it was always unlikely, especially in a receive-only device.

Still, if you have the capability of such a supply chain attack, I would imagine the rewards of silent surveillance (tracking, audio) would be of much higher value than this kind of attack where 3 out of 1000s targets were killed.

mrtksn6• 2 years ago

most likely answer is that a shipment of pagers was intercepted and implanted with explosives

I agree, there are photos and videos of extensive damage to furniture and injuries that go way beyond what a small lithium battery would NORMALLY do.

Also, all the CCTV footage I've seen indicates explosions and not fire.

It can be explosives planted, However it can be batteries modified to explode instead of burn&outgas. I recall a video of someone losing their lives when their vape battery exploded. IIRC the vape's metal structure acted as a container that enabled pressure build up and eventual sudden release.

There are many stories about vapes exploding, some causing serious damage similar to these:

https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/vape-explod...

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/e-cig-vape-pen-explosion/

Kind of makes sense to modify the battery because since they still need a functioning battery anyway and the space is limited.

jajko2• 2 years ago

Given history, given adversary, given all facts known thats practically sure. Usually Mosad doesn't say anything so we won't get much more anytime soon.

There will be few movies and documentaries about this for sure once things calm down a bit. I presume they used pagers instead of phones to not be so easily trackable via google/apple software and hardware?

clydethefrog• 2 years ago

There are several sources online claiming the model used is the Gold Apollo Rugged Pager AR924. This pager is made in Taiwan, a country that has close ties with Israel and it's most important ally USA. Just a week ago Taiwan's Foreign Minister Lin Chia-Lung openly emphasized the critical importance of intelligence sharing and technology cooperation with Israel.

mcast• 2 years ago

It's pretty insane to see remote detonation technology used and implemented in 1996, considering cell phones looked like Nokia bricks and the RF hardware needed to implement this needs to fit in a pretty tight space in the phone.

torginus3• 2 years ago

TIL: pagers still exist.

I wonder, if these devices could be suspect, why don't they order these cheap Chinese GSM modules. You can't hide explosives in those.

Also, afaik all GSM modules broadcast their IMEI numbers over the network. Explosives or not, I'm sure they can all be tracked and triangulated, since they talk to the towers. I don't think these things are secure anyways.

sandworm1012• 2 years ago

If an entire shipment was intercepted and modified, how many other pagers are out there? How many non-targeted persons are walking around with a bomb in their pocket?

loceng8• 2 years ago

And yet it took 5 hours for IDF to respond to Hamas breaching their border - where it only takes a maximum of 45 minutes via helicopter to get to any point along the Israel-Palestine border?

Is there any technology possible to help people more seriously see incongruences for what they are, technology to help prevent people from propaganda - or is that primarily simply a systems control issue - education system, information system, etc - that would be party to a censorship-suppression narrative control and distraction apparatus?

amelius2• 2 years ago

Question: assuming there were explosives inside the pager, what would happen if the owner of such device would try to board an airplane?

romseb• 2 years ago

After seeing some videos of faces and hands that were blown off, it's clear that the tiny batteries could not have caused explosions like this.

flohofwoe• 2 years ago

First thing I thought of were the exploding PCs from Die Hard 4. Back then it was such a ridiculous thing, but here we are ;)

tw04• 2 years ago

I already wonder if this was anything that was planted in the devices perviously

That seems to be the case with almost complete certainty. They said it was a new batch of pagers that the targets/victims/whatever you choose to call them received in the last few months.

The pagers that detonated were the latest model brought in by Hezbollah in recent months, three security sources said.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-m...

xg152• 2 years ago

Haaretz reports that the devices were purchased only recently - and heated up before detonating. [1]

So, that sounds like indicators for both, either a supply-chain attack or malware targeting the battery.

[1] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-17/ty-article-li...

tptacek41• 2 years ago

How much stuff is there to fuck with in a standard, untampered-with pager? Seems unlikely this was pure cyber (and some novel battery hack). And if you need supply chain interception to carry out the attack in the first place, why wouldn't you insert explosives? There's a history of these kinds of attacks.

Kapura• 2 years ago

Stuxnet had a much lower body count.

bluescrn6• 2 years ago

If the footage on Twitter is legit, then there was a small detonation, with a bang, not a burning battery with a 'whoosh' and flames. Which indicates that the internals of the pager had been replaced with something rather more explosive than a lithium battery.

burke• 2 years ago

Lithium ion batteries in devices are sandwiched layers enclosed in a kind of 'pouch', right? So what if you manufactured one of these that looked identical to the normal battery, but only had half a battery inside, and the rest of it was plastic explosive. Maybe put a tiny chip in there that, when a particular pattern of current draw happens, fires a detonator. Then, some firmware hack in the device proper that responds to some event and actuates that current draw pattern. It wouldn't even look suspicious if you opened it up.

wkat424212• 2 years ago

Compared to Stuxnet it's also a first where this kind of attack was done at scale. Regardless of the particular target it's of course the question whether this is a desirable practice in cyber warfare. For such a new field there are very few ethical guidelines yet, like we do have for more conventional warfare.

jakeinspace4• 2 years ago

Unlike stuxnet, this attack had a lot of non-hezbolah civilian casualties. It’s "targeted" in a sense, but not really much more targeted than a drive-by assassination attempt. Anybody close to these people could have sustained serious injury, and there are reports of children injured and dead. We’ll have to wait for details to emerge.

Politically, this is the sort of action that invites comparison to conventional terrorism. It also begs the question of why Hezbollah or other actors shouldn’t try a similar attack against civilian targets. It’s almost like a chemical or biological attack, which most countries shy away from because it’s so hard to defend against (a big part of why it’s illegal). No country can perfectly safeguard its supply chain from intentional sabotage.

I’m afraid that the entire world is a little bit less safe after this move. Maybe Israel is goading Hezbollah into all-out war, who knows, but this affects all of us.

edm0nd3• 2 years ago

These pagers were 100% a supply chain attack. Intercepted and modified with small explosives embedded in them or swapped the entire shipment out with ones with a small explosives in them.

There is no possibility these explosions are from battery overloads via an exploit or firmware hack.

sroussey3• 2 years ago

Likely, there are many many more of them out there, just did not fall into the dragnet of phone numbers that were set to activate.

barbazoo3• 2 years ago

These pagers were 100% a supply chain attack.

What did you base that on though, 100% is pretty confident

spidersenses3• 2 years ago

or firmware hack.

There's still the question of how the explosive capsule would have been triggered. It couldn't just explode at the first incoming call. There must be more to that.

doubleorseven2• 2 years ago

If we try to do what we are best at here at HN, let’s focus the discussion on the technical aspects of it.

Technical? Yes it's interesting but you are missing the biggest part here: how do you convince such a huge organization to switch so many devices? This human engineering is the really interesting part here.

BillSaysThis• 2 years ago

Hezbollah has said some time ago they were switching to pagers because Israel can get inside their cell phones.

more_corn• 2 years ago

I find it extremely unlikely that this was done with the native capabilities and equipment in the devices. It would be extremely interesting if it were. A far simpler explanation would be explosives implanted en-route.

XorNot4• 2 years ago

The more interesting question is whether any sort of remote-detonate capability was involved, or this was just timed explosives.

If you look at something like this [1], then the obvious way to do this is to replace one of the NiMH batteries with a lithium cell providing the full output voltage, and replace the other cell with the explosive payload.

A basic timer set them off, and installation would be straightforward. You could probably even arrange this to not be distinguishable on X-Ray by playing with the structure of the explosive device so it would look like a battery.

Getting a little fancier, setting your timer up so the pager "waits for a page" by current draw (from say, the buzzer motor) would be a way to try and ensure the user was holding it near their face before it went off.

What's missing in the current reporting is whether this was simultaneous, keyed to a page, or what have you.

[1] https://store.jtech.com/jtech-guestcall-pager-nimh-battery-5...

fhub3• 2 years ago

Shaped charge hidden in the battery casing. Sounds like batteries heated up which is consistent with one method that shaped charges could be detonated. No extra wires needed going into the battery (better concealment).

rendang2• 2 years ago

Wouldn't a shaped charge be pointed in a specific direction, and hence could miss depending on the device's position in target's pocket?

mrguyorama• 2 years ago

Most high explosives need a high impact detonation source. You can literally set C4 on fire and it wont explode. It needs high temperature and pressure. And I do not think the 120F that a "hot" battery could get to reliably could trigger a high explosive in a way that wouldn't accidentally trigger beforehand. The middle east is a warm place.

pts_• 2 years ago

It's supply chain attack meets the physical world, and now might be replicated.

NelsonMinar2• 2 years ago

I wonder what Israel did to ensure that only legitimate targets were harmed by the sabotaged pagers.

rdtsc6• 2 years ago

Would we be surprised if the answer is “nothing”.

Of course we can read anything we want from the silence, as it’s unlike we’re getting any details about it. Anything in the range of “of course they did, we’re talking about a civilized country” to “of course they didn’t, how could they”.

ars11• 2 years ago

These pagers were distributed only to Hezbollah members, these were not just standard pagers anyone could buy.

yoavm8• 2 years ago

The fact that these pagers were to be used by Hezbollah is what they did.

megous3• 2 years ago

If it's basically a remotely controlled IED via a public communication network, then there's nothing technically interesting about that, really.

But the aspect of some supposedly civilized state staging a mass terror attack via a remotely controlled IEDs, putting suddenly thousands of people, many of them civilians (yes, Hezballah are also civilians, because they're a major political party in Lebanon) into hospital, killing ~10, critically infuring ~200, is way more interesting.

You can generate many questions about that aspect. Like the whole why on both strategic and tactical levels? How does this fit with the international law? Why are people kinda chill about this?

Re the response below: No proof of specific targeting of combatants, yet. No proof of any attempt to not affect bystanders, etc. Yet, there are videos of bombs exploding while people are shopping with children around, etc. Pretty much indiscriminate.

Definitely not battery burnings: https://t.me/hamza20300/293409 these are the scale/type of injuries that this caused. (Two children there just in this single scene in one hospital, so beware.)

baltimore• 2 years ago

No, a mass terror attack would indiscriminately target victims. This is almost entirely opposite -- an organization widely recognized as a terrorist group (1) is narrowly targeted.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_g...

wing-_-nuts2• 2 years ago

Hezballah are also civilians, because they're a major political party in Lebanon

That's an interesting take. Are you saying hamas are also civilians because they're the major political party in gaza?

markus_zhang10• 2 years ago

My hunch is that IL intelligence bought some 3,000 - 4,000 pagers of the same models, fixed them with explosives and trigger systems, and swapped them with the package sent to Hez in the middle of transport or (probably) in the Lebanon distribution center.

So they needed to know: which company manufactured those pagers; which models are sent to Hez; when they were in transport and arrived at the distribution center; which packages went to Hez operatives, and much more information.

BTW rumors says the pagers were manufactured by a Taiwanese company, not confirmed though but some of my friends were able to read from the pictures that show what was left of the pagers.

uoaei• 2 years ago

There is no way an unaltered pager has enough potential to explode in any way that could be harmful using a software-based exploit. Unless somehow the BMS (even if there was one) allowed you to short the battery with software, which seems really stupid to design into such a system.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 2 years ago

I suspect supply-chain attack (probably started some time ago), combined with a pager signal software hack.

I really hope that they didn't figure out a way to make unmodified kit explode, because it would only be a matter of time, before our devices were blowing up everywhere, as folks do it for the lulz.

FrameworkFred• 2 years ago

I agree on both points and it's worth noting the cell phone in everyone's pocket has a lot more battery in it than a pager does.

IF this was truly done to unmodified pagers, then we ALL probably need to reconsider how we use and carry our phones and what the mAh rating on our batteries implies in the context of a similar attack.

tamimio6• 2 years ago

they didn't figure out a way to make unmodified kit explode

I don’t think so no, just observing the aftermath of each shows that it was modified. Also, assuming it was unmodified way, it will go both ways so I doubt it.

AndrewKemendo• 2 years ago

Militaries around the world have robust networks to infiltrate supply chains for sabotage. It’s kind of a basic part of the whole intelligence covert and clandestine operations capabilities expected of a “first world” nation.

Israel is one of the better countries at doing this undetected so, no surprises here.

humansareok1• 2 years ago

Having seen some of the aftermath I find it extremely hard to believe this was the result of overloading batteries. It looks like small grenades exploded in their hands. If lithium batteries can indeed explode like this I would suspect no one would ever carry one again after this. They should certainly be illegal to have on planes for example.

mattmaroon3• 2 years ago

My other thought is that these probably came from the Iranian military, and it’s quite possible the Iranian military puts explosives in them so they can remotely detonate one that falls into enemy hands. And that Isreal simply found out about this and managed to figure out how to activate that.

XorNot4• 2 years ago

This is reaching. How would this mechanism even work? If the enemy has control of a communications device then (1) they've had it and you didn't know for some time and (2) they already know how it works. There's no benefit to putting a self-destruct mechanism into such a thing, since if you know it's compromised then you just stop messaging it.

The self-destruct is pointless, because you can't even verify that it was successful and you have no actual technology to protect (unlike say, US military drones which self-destruct to protect technological details of their construction - and the US would still prefer to commit a mission to bombing a crash site to be sure if they can).

Basically you answer your own problem: the most likely outcome of a self-destruct mechanism is that it goes off accidentally against your own forces, or gets exploited - while it would deliver no actual benefit to you.

Which is to say: when analyzing an adversaries likely actions you don't start by assuming they're stupid or irrational (which is different from whether or not their overall goals might be stupid or irrational).

gslepak3• 2 years ago

let’s focus the discussion on the technical aspects of it.

The headline chosen here is already biased: "Dozens of _Hezbollah members_ [..]"

Anyone following this closely can see that plenty other title choices could be used. There are headlines that would be credibly neutral, headlines that favor the IDF, and headlines that favor Hezbollah. HN is currently choosing to go with a non-neutral, non-technical headline for this story. Maybe we should make the headline neutral as well before telling the commenters to focus solely on the technicals?

If you don't understand what I'm referring to, look at some of the downvoted and hidden comments here.

TwentyPosts• 2 years ago

Honestly struggling to comprehend how this one isn't neutral.

As far as we know this was a supply-chain attack specifically on military pagers actively used by Hezbollah, and (right now) it looks like most injured are in fact Hezbollah members (which makes sense, since no one else has any reason to carry such a pager). (With some sad and unfortunate exceptions.)

pragma_x2• 2 years ago

make the device exagerte some existing functionality to a point where it caused a malfunction? Thoughts on this?

I'm actually astounded by the things that must have been in place to make this attack even plausible, let alone viable. At the same time, the ramifications are sobering. Here's where my head is:

- Hezbollah failed to inspect electronics that, if tampered with, could have lead to some kind of intel breach. That or the explosive modifications were indistinguishable from the real thing.

- Operatives knew what pager numbers were in use by Hezbollah, perhaps exclusively to the rest of the population.

From there I have three possible explanations for how this may have been executed:

1. Many shipments of such pagers bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon and other places in the region, were identified, intercepted, modified, and sent on their way with minimal delay. You probably don't get many opportunities like this (how often do you replace a pager?), so this is really quite a hat-trick.

2. Or: there are many more pagers out there with a very dangerous vulnerability on board, with only a special pager sequence that stands between the user and sudden death. This suggests simply infiltrating the manufacturer instead. This also has much more favorable lead times and can leverage the manufacturer's resources to that end.

3. Or: There's a pager manufacturer out there with gob-smackingly bad engineering and software on completely stock units, which operatives simply exploited to (sub)lethal effect.

wut428• 2 years ago

what pager numbers

This is where it gets confusing. We all remember the pagers running on cellular/2G networks but it seems that nowadays most pagers are HF devices and mostly broadcast receivers. Quite unclear which one are involved.

fmobus• 2 years ago

You don't have to intercept a shipment and tamper at large scale with incredible speed if you're posing as the supplier.

That's what I believe happened. Specially likely if you consider that terrorist orgs are not exactly putting RFPs or doing large orders at legit vendors. That gives you the chance to pose as a helpful supplier that operates on the down low and accepts cash on delivery, etc.

dyauspitr• 2 years ago

I don’t think there’s anything in a standard pager to cause an explosion large enough to injure ~3000 people. This is almost certainly an explosive added to them at some point.

anewguy9000• 2 years ago

we could also talk about the technical aspects of the nazi gas chambers, but maybe its only human if first we condemn this for what it is, a war crime. i for one am sick of the normalization of it

loodish3• 2 years ago

The implications of weaponising a lithium battery, which seems like what was done, are potentially really significant.

Lithium batteries are everywhere, most of them significantly larger than the one in a small pager. This includes secure environments like military/intelligence facilities and aircraft.

Proof that a lithium battery pack can be weaponised as a bomb, in a way that avoids easy detection, should be a significant concern to anyone who tries to maintain the security of those spaces.

acyou• 2 years ago

For manufactured cells, integrated safety devices would likely preclude such a fault.

People say they have seen cells explode, but don't realize those are probably highly engineered failure modes (the cells are/need to be specifically designed not to explode).

It's why people are burned by consumer product battery fires, and die from fire, but I think death from explosion of consumer products is rarer.

esalman• 2 years ago

If we try to do what we are best at here at HN

People like Einstein and Oppenheimer would disagree. We are humans first and not tech workers, the best we can do is to try prevent humans tragedies unfolding everyday.

jhaand• 2 years ago

Has anyone find the FCC ID or manual on the AR924 Rugged pager? CNN mentions that they sold 220,000 units world wide, including the US. And there's nothing about the thing for both FCC and CE.

grahamj• 2 years ago

Crazy. I wonder if they were used for tracking until they were found out, at which point BOOM

throwaway55479• 2 years ago

At least Eight killed and 2,750 wounded (200 of those in a critical condition) [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...

listless• 2 years ago

Good lord that’s a lot of damage from exploding pagers. This is kind of next level stuff here - straight out of a movie.

tke248• 2 years ago

My guess is they infiltrated the pager supply putting the bombs in all pagers and triggered them with Hezbollah's own encoded message system so only the guilty parties would be effected.

rdl3• 2 years ago

Seems more likely their explosive implant used a separate RF trigger -- makes the whole thing much simpler for them, less detectable. They could run a plane or drone overhead to send the radio initiate message.

Looked like 5-10g (maybe up to 20g?) of explosive, NOT battery. I think you could fit the whole package inside an AA battery, along with an AAAA battery, so you could do something crazy there, or just replace a rechargeable battery pack with something of smaller battery capacity containing the explosive, some electronics, etc. Or just use spare volume inside the case and hope no one does gross physical inspection.

01100011• 2 years ago

It's trivial to sniff a data line to the LCD and look for a specific message(I regrettably had to do this in the late 90's to fix a bug using an additional Z8 microcontroller). That said, it would be more work than inserting a separate module with its own message reception logic.

tptacek41• 2 years ago

Market data suggests that Lebanon is completely saturated with smart phones, like everywhere else in the developed world, so it seems likely that there are only "guilty" pagers (certainly in this shipment, but more likely in the region).

MrLeap2• 2 years ago

Many doctors all over the world still use pagers.

einszwei4• 2 years ago

From Israel's perspective, this supply chain attack was undoubtedly a clever move, but I can't help but wonder about its long-term consequences.

Although it was aimed at harming Israel's adversaries, third-party countries may now hesitate to involve Israel in their supply chains. There's also the risk that other major producers could replicate this tactic, potentially leading to further escalation in the region or beyond.

In the short term, it's a smart strategy for Israel, but they've likely opened Pandora's box in the process.

flyinglizard5• 2 years ago

It's said those devices were Iranian made. What makes you think Israel has any overt involvement in the supply chain to begin with?

ceejayoz4• 2 years ago

It's said those devices were Iranian made.

Made, or provided by?

tptacek41• 2 years ago

Probably because of Israel's demonstrated infiltration of IRGC operations inside of Iran? Just a guess.

minkles8• 2 years ago

This is a one shot attack. They will never be able to do it again. And I don't think most of the world has pissed off Mossad quite as much as Hezbollah. Assuming they even did it!

brookst• 2 years ago

As someone else posted, it's not entirely novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash#Assassination

ds• 2 years ago

"One shot attack"
> This is the second time israel has done this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash

sangnoir• 2 years ago

OP was most likely concerned about Israeli businesses that supply (or ship) non-explosive components/products no longer being trusted.

rlpb• 2 years ago

They will never be able to do it again.

Only if Hezbollah take steps to avoid it. Presumably they will, but presumably there is a cost, and so Israel will continue to benefit from them having to divert resources to doing that.

lawlessone4• 2 years ago

Yeah every company that has a part of their supply chain via Israel must be wondering now if this could be done to their devices.

alistairSH4• 2 years ago

Isn't that true of any supply chain that involves foreign states? Usually it's just surveillance, not destructive stuff, but expecting state actors to stay out of things is... naive?

tptacek41• 2 years ago

Israel isn't part of the supply chain for Hezbollah pagers.

pkphilip• 2 years ago

Do you really think this supply chain bringing pagers to the Hezbollah actually went through Israel?! Israel has ways of intercepting packages in other ports outside of Israel.

some_random5• 2 years ago

I'm not at all convinced that's the case, unless it comes out that the targeting was extremely broad (like if Israel was just putting bombs in every pager going into Lebanon rather than targeting a specific shipment going to Hezbollah) I don't think there's really any new risk for other countries.

Izikiel43• 2 years ago

From the amount of injured it seems more like a broad attack than a targeted one.

Most likely they knew some of them would go to hezbollah, and that was enough, collateral damage be damned.

adonese• 2 years ago

As if Israil ever cared about civil vs combatants.

tomp2• 2 years ago

Do you think Hezbollah was buying stuff from Israel, or otherwise using Israeli supply chains?

I think it's far more likely that Mossad has infiltrated whatever foreign (non-Israeli) supply chain they were using.

So this can happen regardless of whether you're using Israeli supply chains or not.

tivert2• 2 years ago

I think it's far more likely that Mossad has infiltrated whatever foreign (non-Israeli) supply chain they were using.

Yeah. Wasn't there something in the Snowden leaks about the CIA intercepting servers in-transit to install implants on them? I'm sure Israel is doing something similar.

joe_the_user• 2 years ago

Do you think Hezbollah was buying stuff from Israel, or otherwise using Israeli supply chains?

The modern supply chain is vastly deep. Iran can buy something from (IDK) India which might use software or hardware from Israel. As a further example, unless there's viable phone OS I don't know about, even Hezbollah will be using Android or iOS (and so buying from the US). etc.

I think it's far more likely that Mossad has infiltrated whatever foreign (non-Israeli)

Maybe that is more likely. But I don't think my or your guesses matter so much as public perception. IE, it would change the situation that a given customer may look skeptically at an Israeli software or hardware product. Or they may not given that price and features trumps security and quality for nearly everything these days.

ignoramous7• 2 years ago

So this can happen regardless of whether you're using Israeli supply chains or not.

The point is, would allies trust if it were China that pulled this off? Huawei/TikTok were thrown under the bus for way less.

anigbrowl10• 2 years ago

I think the point is that if you're not Hezbollah or any kind of political actor, but just a customer for Israeli technology (public or private), would you really want to keep buying it? Leave aside boycotts over Israeli policy, you might be opening yourself to becoming an Israeli attack vector and either find your own interests compromised or become a target of Israel's enemies if they thought you were complicit.

XorNot4• 2 years ago

It was pointed out to me that you shouldn't overthink it: the most likely thing which happened is Israel had someone inside Hezbollah procurement and used them to take delivery (I'd put much lower odds on this guy being in on the plan, it's doubtful he even knew he was working for Israel directly).

You've got to remember that as internet people, we want everything to have a clever storyline to it. Intelligence services exploit that exact expectation though: the first thing you attack is trust within the organization itself, since it gives you more access, more easily and once people have talked themselves into "supply chain threat" there's a real danger they've ignored "actually the guy signing off on the paperwork is taking a payoff to ignore some delivery irregularities".

KeplerBoy2• 2 years ago

meh, the most probable explanation is that israel infiltrated hezbollah and whoever was in charge of ordering and distributing those devices knowingly distributed the tampered devices.

That guy got a deal and was evacuated with his family before events unfolded. Seems way easier than alternative plans.

mschuster913• 2 years ago

In the short term, it's a smart strategy for Israel, but they've likely opened Pandora's box in the process.

Did they? Supply chain attacks, intercepted parcels, none of this is new - the US, going by the Snowden leaks, has a long history of tampering with parcels in transit, which is why a few of the "libre phone" vendors offer to seal the parcel, the device and all screws in random glitter glue and take photos prior to shipping so that any attempt at tampering in transit is not hideable (there is no known way to recreate a glitter pattern).

barbazoo3• 2 years ago

From Israel's perspective, this supply chain attack was undoubtedly a clever move

From The Guardian [1]:

Eight killed and 2,750 wounded

Was that a clever move if you're killing "only" 8 potential adversaries?

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...

walthamstow• 2 years ago

If their comms are severely disrupted, yes. Even if it wasn't militarily effective, it's still quite a clever attack.

John238322• 2 years ago

Killing isn't always the goal.

The effect of this "action" is the same as a bouncing betty. (I assume) The goal is to incapacitate and use resources.

AustinDev3• 2 years ago

The death toll isn't the goal. They're after the 2nd order effects, now there are ~3,000 operatives that are marked by a scar that is relatively distinctive. They also have substantially disrupted their communication protocols and caused psychological damage.

markus_zhang10• 2 years ago

I think the purpose is to terrorize your opponents. Sometimes getting seriously wounded is even worse than getting killed, from the perspective of Hez. Now they need to handle thousands of wounded members, which is much more expensive than dead ones.

gojomo2• 2 years ago

It looks like a trigger that can only be pulled once.

Thus, choice of the optimal time could be influenced by a lot of things:

- knowledge of other Hezbollah imminent action making comms disruption right now of great importance

- recognition that the vulnerability had been discovered and was about to be remediated

- via other "eyes on" prime targets, knowledge that just one or two top leaders were briefly in especially-vulnerable positions (like sleeping alongside their pagers)

- etc

And, there will be a "long tail" of damage to Hezbollah's usual communications practices & trust in devices/suppliers. Some marginal recruits may even be deterred from joining a battle against an opponent which can carry out this sort of attack – though of course, others may be emboldened.

dagaci4• 2 years ago

TBH Israel does not concern itself about killing bystanders generally and our western press will also laser focus on hezbullah.

mupuff12348• 2 years ago

Idk who exactly was hit but losing a hand will definitely hurt ones ability to fight.

Atotalnoob• 2 years ago

Killing is one thing, but wounded soldiers/operatives are a much larger drain on resources than killing.

The wounded people need care, medicine, rehab, therapy, and feeding during their recovery.

This occupies significant resources of your enemy.

I’m not commenting on this specific attack, but talking in general.

rocqua5• 2 years ago

If this were coordinated with a ground attack on Hezbollah, it would be a great way to disrupt any defense right before it needs to offer resistance.

I'm surprised they used it out of such a concept. It is almost heartening, because it suggests no such attack is currently anticipated by Israel.

CydeWeys9• 2 years ago

I think the simplest explanation here is that pagers are small and light and don't have that much free space inside them, and it's hard to fit enough explosive into them to reliably kill people. The figures I saw was only a few grams of explosive could be fit in them. If you look at the photos and videos that have been coming out today you'll see what the injuries look like; they're not as catastrophic as getting shot with a bullet, or anything close to a real explosive with orders of magnitude more explosive in it like an artillery shell, rocket, aerial bomb, etc.

I would guess Israel would have preferred more lethal pagers, but the required amount of explosive simply didn't fit. So the resulting deaths are from the people who got really unlucky, whereas getting wounded was the modal result.

elorant3• 2 years ago

It surely is because you corrode your target’s trust in technology. They moved from smartphones to pagers, now they’ll have to find even cruder types of communications.

myth_drannon3• 2 years ago

500 blinded

yowzadave• 2 years ago

And how many of those wounded are totally unconnected bystanders, who just happened to be standing next to the individual in the grocery store or wherever?

IG_Semmelweiss6• 2 years ago

I actually think that an unintended consequence is that Mossad has permanently flagged the vast majority of Hizbullah's followers, an entire generation, on Lebanese soil.

The wound patterns will emerge for the vast majority of victims: arms, hands, eyes and hips ? Time will tell.

The Lebanese army, and the IDF, now suddenly can tell between civilian vs combatant.

seized• 2 years ago

I doubt those 2,750 all have minor injuries. That's 2,750 targets, a lot of whom probably now now have missing fingers/hands, a chunk missing from their leg, face injuries.... Aka major injuries from having a small explosion on their belt or int their pocket. It's going to be 2,750 probably major injuries that will take a long time to recover from.

montyboy_us• 2 years ago

It's the psychology. Every sat phone and laptop is being opened up right now...

mattfrommars2• 2 years ago

2,750 wounded

Absolutely insane. Imagine this many Israeli had been wounder by Hammas attack.

Disgusting move from Israel to keep civilian causalities minimum! This is no excuse for 'collateral damage'

rocqua5• 2 years ago

Wounded soldiers are often a bigger burden than killed ones. You neee to retrieve them, take care of them, and they may never be fight capable again. They are also a breathing reminder of the costs of war, and at the same time less likely to make others vow revenge.

agapon2• 2 years ago

The point was probably to reduce accidental casualties. Also, the wounds can be quite severe. Finally, a device like a pager cannot hold a lot of explosive substance in its spare space anyway.

hello_computer• 2 years ago

BDS looks better and better with each passing day.

dredmorbius10• 2 years ago

BDS?

mynameishere• 2 years ago

Israel used letter bombs for a long time to assassinate and terrorize. People didn't stop using the mail because of that, but upgraded their opsec.

markus_zhang10• 2 years ago

IMO, this gives IL's enemies more excuses to execute more horrible attacks. Considering pagers are civilian products and some of them might actually be delivered to non-Hez civilians, the consequence is pretty dire.

it basically says: we can do whatever we want because we can. Now imagine what the other side is going to reply.

kranke1553• 2 years ago

The other side was already doing everything it could.

underdeserver10• 2 years ago

They've been firing hundreds of rockets, daily, into Israeli territory. You think they need more excuses to do anything?

lottin• 2 years ago

I don't know if you've been following this conflict, but Israel's enemies don't need excuses to attack Israel. They think Israel doesn't have a right to exist, and thus see the very existence of the state of Israel as a provocation that justifies violence against Jews.

DevX101• 2 years ago

Right now one of the fastest growing companies is the Israel cybersecurity company Wiz, founded by founders and investors from Israel's Unit 8200, their secretive cyber hacking group. Seems to me a massive security risk for any US company to be relying on critical security to a non American founded companies.

a_cloudberry• 2 years ago

I created a throwaway account just for this.

I actually hired, and we later fired, a couple of 'engineers' from Unit 8200. They were technically quite weak, and when Oct. 7 happened, I wasn't surprised at all. If this was the cream of the crop, the defense community should seriously re-evaluate the efficacy of the IDF.

golergka• 2 years ago

About half of all Israeli tech workers are from 8200. It's nothing remarkable at all.

bonestamp24• 2 years ago

I guess it's good that Google's attempt to acquire Wiz fell through.

bostik• 2 years ago

Israel has a mandatory military service, and they have been cultivating technical talent development in their armed forces for a long time. So I would think that the arrow of causality runs the opposite way.

In other words: virtually every Israeli has been in the military, and for the technically competent ones, were likely to be recruited into their offensive intelligence unit. Coupled with a government whose industrial strategy has been to promote business development in this sector, we are in a situation where practically every single founder of an Israeli tech company has a military service background.

Those with (offensive) infosec mindset end up founding infosec focused businesses, knowing that there is readily available investment available for them. As a result, the Venn diagram between the unit members and infosec business founders is likely to show a pretty big overlap.

carapace2• 2 years ago

I can't help but wonder about its long-term consequences.

War is over.

The long-term consequences are that we use our words instead of exothermic reactions to reach livable compromises.

carapace2• 2 years ago

What? You guys like war?

Seriously though. Dynamite didn't do it, nuclear bombs didn't do it, but tiny precision bombs are going to work: just kill all the people who like to fight. QED

shmatt5• 2 years ago

israel wasn't identified as israel, and hizbolla weren't identified of hizbolla

much of the work of a CIA or Mossad agent isn't breaking in to this house or murdering that person. It's working as an executive in a shell company

No one is going to sell a terrorist organization thousands of new beepers. The hizbolla probably also created shell companies. Israel knew their cover and approached them as a foreign seller. Everyone is lying to everyone

In reality the supply chain space is probably full of shell companies from all different terrorist organizations and western countries

riazrizvi• 2 years ago

Isn’t political isolation a strategy in extremism movements? It encourages some people in the middle to move into your camp, while others who move away can become convenient enemies. So from my understanding, the consequences are possibly considered another benefit for the country’s current government.

random9749832• 2 years ago

Everytime you say Israel you must insert US, just as you must insert Iran every time you mention Palestine. These are who the war is between. Hamas or Hezbollah by itself is nothing and so is a <10 million population fighting several adversaries. And the US will always win in escalation which is exactly what they have aimed to achieve and why Iran never gave a 'proper' response to the assassination of Haniyeh.

rolux2• 2 years ago

In the short term, it's a smart strategy for Israel, but they've likely opened Pandora's box in the process.

Absolutely. From today on, this type of attack will have to be considered part of the arsenal.

While building thousands of explosive communication devices and swapping a large shipment requires substantial resources and intelligence, the actual "sophistication" of today's attack seems to lie in the fact that the perpetrator managed to specifically target a clandestine adversarial organization.

If you don't care about that last part, I don't think it's completely out of reach for a hypothetical "state sponsored terrorist organization" to have a thousand smart phone explosives shipped into a target market, say the European Union or the United States. Such an attack, if successful, would be devastating.

cromka3• 2 years ago

Absolutely. From today on, this type of attack will have to be considered part of the arsenal.

I doubt that. It’s way more likely that from today on, every batch of devices used by VIPs will be tested for explosives, thus rendering such attacks moot. Finding such devices would also enable figuring out who your enemy’s operatives are.

This was a one-off.

respondo21342• 2 years ago

I don't see this as a smart move (let alone strategy) in any time frame. As a third-party observer greatly removed from the conflict I used to view Israel as an island under attack from terrorists. Now I'm struggling to see the differences between their activities and blowing up airplanes or launching rockets from schools and hospitals. You can say I'm naive, and why would Israel care about how I feel, but as a country and a people they only exist as long as we're their benefactor, and I don't think I'm alone in how I feel.

dmead• 2 years ago

They were never different. They just speak English better than the arabs.

AnarchismIsCool2• 2 years ago

There are old stories of the Russians planting mines inside children's toys during some of the later cold war conflicts. This is starting to feel a bit like that. Nobody had any way of knowing who was holding those pagers when they sent that packet but they still distributed thousands of munitions throughout the populace and pressed the red button. Now there are probably at least a hundred or so still out there that haven't exploded and are just live UXO sitting in people's desk drawers.

I'd say it's pretty fucked.

senectus12• 2 years ago

jesus, this is going to make taking electronics on aircraft damned near impossible now.

_DeadFred_19• 2 years ago

There are 100,000+ northern Israeli's who are refugees inside Israel because Hezbollah is firing hundred of rockets indiscriminately daily at civilian targets, but Israel doing something specifically targeted at higher level Hezbollah operatives makes you feel like Israel is doing exactly the same thing? All while you don't even yet know the reason for the Israeli op (was it to stop an imminent Hezbollah action? Seems odd that this also impacted so many operative in Syria, doesn't it? Why aren't people mentioning that this was larger than Lebanon?)

BjoernKW• 2 years ago

Now I'm struggling to see the differences between their activities and blowing up airplanes or launching rockets from schools and hospitals.

Well, the obvious difference is that blowing up airplanes or launching rockets at residential areas intentionally targets civilians in order to spread a maximum amount of terror among the civilian population while blowing up pagers that were used for coordinating attacks against Israel very specifically targets operatives involved in such activities.

Some of the initial footage shows such a device going off while innocent bystanders remain unharmed. You can't get any more targeted than that.

Yes, such a pager might have ended up in the hands of a non-involved person, but given the facts known so far that's very unlikely, because there's a reason those people were carrying these devices on them: They were afraid of being tracked down by Mossad in the first place.

poisonarena• 2 years ago

as a country and a people they only exist as long as we're their benefactor

Why do so many people think this? If the US stopped "giving" them "military aid" which is actually just disney dollars to spend in the US military industrial complex they would be out a small percentage of their defense budget.

archsurface• 2 years ago

No one's alone in how they feel.

fracus2• 2 years ago

When you don't treat people who are brutally uncivilized with civility, it isn't long before people forget who the bad guy is and where it all started. If you are a civilized society, you have to treat the uncivil with civility. You have to set an example.

mjfl• 2 years ago

you should really take a rigorous look into the history of early Israel and the ideologies of its founding members like Hertzl and Jabotinsky. They have always been terrorists.

anon2912• 2 years ago

as we're their benefactor, and I don't think I'm alone in how I feel.

It's undoubtedly true the US supports Israel generally, but Israel is more capable of its own.

walrushunter4• 2 years ago

"Israel orchestrating an attack against the terrorists they're at war with makes me think less of them" is certainly an opinion. A batshit fucking stupid opinion, but you're entitled to it nonetheless.

Please don't vote.

jmyeet2• 2 years ago

Let's be clear here: it was a terrorist attack. Replace "IsraeL" and "Lebanon" with "iran" and "Israel" and Iran would already have bombed by the US.

Netanyahu is trying to ignite a regional war. It's the only way he stays out of prison. If the genocide in Gaza ends, his government falls and he goes to jail. He wants to drag the US into this regional war.

Do you think that's smart from Israel's perspective? Will that improve that safety of Israeli citizens? Or will it subject them to counterattacks?

Is that smart?

dralley3• 2 years ago

It's not a terrorist attack unless the primary goal is causing terror. The primary goal here was clearly causing damage to Hamas' command structure by putting a few thousand militants in the hospital, and also literally blowing up their communications network.

_DeadFred_19• 2 years ago

You have zero information about the goal here. There could have been an imminent attack from from Hezbollah that this action by Israel stopped, an attack that could have caused much more collateral damage on both sides of the border than this targeted at Hezbollah op. You literally have nothing to base calling this a terrorist attack on at this point.

IG_Semmelweiss6• 2 years ago

Israelis are not the 1st ones at this.

The CIA did something similar for the better part of 4 decades

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-...

It was just another Opsec failure (or success, depending on your perspective). I dont see israeli hardware devices being any more suspect. Same as china. They were suspect before and they continue to be. 1 is our ally and 1 ins not

sgregnt• 2 years ago

The combatant to civilian casulties in this paper explosion is probably unparalleled in the warfare history. I wish all conflicts would strive to have such a great record.

jrochkind15• 2 years ago

Their strategy seems to consciously be showing everyone that they are craziest mf'ers who don't care about any consequences or collateral damage ever.

I agree with you that there some pretty serious global consequences that will come back to bite them too, but, then, they pretty intentionally don't care, that seems to be the whole deal.

I have heard Trump supporters actually suggest that a similar thing is a winning strategy for Trump too. Of course he seems to be an irrational unpredictable guy who doesn't care about the consequences in foreign policy, that's great for the USA, everyone will be scared to cross him because he's so unpredictable!

yodsanklai• 2 years ago

Same in Gaza, it seems they are willing to kill pretty much anybody (children, journalists, humanitarians, hostages) close to a potential target, regardless of whatever their allies may be thinking. Kind of a "godfather" strategy.

_DeadFred_19• 2 years ago

This is probably the historical lowest civilian casualty count ever for taking out this large a number of adversaries in an urban environment.

raxxorraxor14• 2 years ago

They did show that religious fundamentalism, which attacked their country and abducted their people, has to pay a very high price for their terrorism.

This terrorism will hurt innocents and the winning strategy would have been to just not attack Israel.

Taniwha4• 2 years ago

Israel's economy is already in the toilet due to them becoming an International pariah because of the ongoing genocide - this will just make it worse

hersko5• 2 years ago

Israel has the second highest GDP in the middle east[1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Middle_Eastern_countri...

shmatt5• 2 years ago

In the toilet? They practically run the world tech industry. Practically every GPU, laptop, and phone have a chip or sensor designed in Israel. FAANG companies keep growing their offices. Startup exits are at an all time high even as the war goes on (NVidia recently bought 2 more Israeli startups IIRC)

And good luck finding a Fortune 1000 company that isn’t using Monday or Akeyless or Zscaler or jfrog and I can keep going

Oh and remember Ilya sutskevers new AI company SSI? In their initial announcement they talked about opening with 2 offices, SFBA and Tel Aviv . You really can’t succeed without Israeli talent

You can like or dislike the government, but Israeli techs income and importance constantly grows YoY

Vicinity9635• 2 years ago

A 10 year old girl died too. They took no precautions to limit damage bystanders even assuming every person with one was a BadGuy™ which makes it terrorism and reprehensible.

_DeadFred_19• 2 years ago

I applaud your empathy but I don't think this number of active military adversaries have been taken out in cities with so little civilian casualties ever in history. We should probably be applauding this action over say the standard targeted bombing of the Hezbollah militants homes which is pretty much the previous 'least casualties' method used.

djohnston3• 2 years ago

Not even close. Thousands of pocket bombs. Some dead civilians, and a lot of dead terrorists. Not reprehensible but a well-executed op.

spidersenses3• 2 years ago

A 10-year-old girl also died.

The death of that one girl, if it isn't entirely made up for propaganda purposes, is obviously very very tragic, but since almost all pro-Hezbollah commentators are referring to that one specific case that's a pretty clear sign that no other children died. Interestingly I'm now seeing comments where they're making her younger from 10yo to 9yo, now even 8yo. You can ask yourself why people are doing that.

While in their own attacks Hezbollah specifically targets Israeli civilians hoping for children to be among the victims.

They took no precautions to limit damage to bystanders

The fact that those explosions were small enough to not kill even a single-digit percentage of several thousand targets who carried those pagers in their pockets near vital organs and blood vessels refutes your allegations.

assuming that every person with a pager was a BadGuy™

These days, even in Lebanon, normal people simply own a cell phone so they can be called. When was the last time you even saw one? They are incredibly rare. The purpose of a pager is to receive (movement) orders and, in the case of Hezbollah, to make tracking more difficult. While it is possible that medical personnel may have used some of these pagers, it is highly unlikely that a new shipment of pagers would not primarily go to Hezbollah's "valuable" command staff, for whom being able to move and operate undetected is the greatest concern. According to Wikipedia, Hezbollah has more than 20,000 full-time fighters, and at 3,000-5,000 devices, this would not have been enough to resupply even a major part of the entire organization, so it is unlikely that any civilian outside the command structure would have received one, even less a random 10yo girl.

Ask yourself again if this is terrorism:

- if the attack was so specifically targeted at military targets

And collateral damage was minimized by:

- using a vector unlikely to be used by innocent civilians

- a sufficiently small explosion not to seriously injure people standing in close proximity to the target as indicated by the many videos floating around

doomleika• 2 years ago

Hezbollah has been firing rockets to civilian area a day after Oct 7 attack with intent to kill civilians to this day.

But a collateral from targeted attack people lose their mind. Much moral. Very righteous.

King-Aaron• 2 years ago

My concern now is another nation-state actor who manages certain large international supply chains doing this on a broader scale against widespread western targets. Your comment on it being a pandoras box is quite profound.

easyThrowaway10• 2 years ago

Somebody in Russia is probably thinking right now "you know, that was quite a clever idea".

jrochkind15• 2 years ago

it makes me think the Israeli decision-makers are trying to leave Hezbollah no choice but to escalate into a larger war. I think Hezbollah has been trying to avoid escalation into all out war, responding in limited proportionate ways despite Israel continuing to escalate. (Can you imagine if Hezbollah had detonated thousands of such devices in Israel? I'd be scared of a nuclear response).

But Israeli leaders maybe decided Hezbollah's hesitation to escalate into all out war must mean that such a war must be good for us and bad for them? Let's try to really make em do it, so we can invade Lebanon again? Why Israeli government thinks it wants an invasion of Lebanon right now, I don't know, but it looks like that's where this goes to me and they must know it?

bushbaba4• 2 years ago

Or you know, 100,000+ Israelis had to leave their homes in north Israel for nearly 1 year. You also had Druze Arab children slaughtered by Hezbollah. So what options would Israel have here?

mr_toad• 2 years ago

I wonder why they did it now of all times. This is a card you can only play once.

BurningFrog4• 2 years ago

Hezbollah started this war on October 8, and they can stop it by ceasing their attacks.

Israel have no reason to want a war. It's Hezbollah who want to conquer Israeli land. Israel wants nothing from Lebanon.

nebula88042• 2 years ago

Israel leadership is probably prepping for some big October surprise timed perfectly just before the US election. Everyone is predicting it so much these days that its not really a surprise but a eventuality at this point.

photochemsyn• 2 years ago

There's also the hit to the reputation of the manufacturers of these devices to consider (even though they were almost certainly intercepted some time after manufacture and modified in transit, or replaced with a different batch that had been ordered by the perpetrator and modified ahead of time for a quick swap). The perpetrator may have been spying on the pager network for some time, and if so then their cover is blown and their information source is gone.

The larger issue is that if shipments of pagers can be intercepted and modified in this manner, then any electronic device can be subjected to other hardware-based attacks - eavesdropping devices, keystroke loggers, etc. What if large numbers of countries with developing tech markets start looking at the suppliers involved the way the USA looks at China's Huawei?

In general this boosts the open-soure model for both software and hardware, so the expected hardware configuration that can be checked visually and with other user-available tools. If any phone, pager, tablet or laptop can be physically hijacked and modified, the user should be allowed access to all the information and tools needed to detect it. This assumes the factory itself is not the bad actor.

Hardware security consultant firms probably have a bright future. Also robots for assistance with inspection.

Nemo_bis• 2 years ago

What if large numbers of countries with developing tech markets start looking at the suppliers involved the way the USA looks at China's Huawei?

It's well known that the NSA performs supply chain attacks by planting spyware on hardware which goes through the USA. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwal...

Whenever the USA complain about something China is allegedly doing, it's a good bet that they know someone in the USA camp is doing that very thing.

Animats2• 2 years ago

That's a real issue. Especially if this escalates to smartphones.

Technical questions:

- Was the explosive in the pager detectable by the normal tests used at airports?

- Who gets to skip those tests? Are all devices carried by airline pilots examined with explosive tests?

- This is selective. Only the addressed devices blow up. That has implications for devices which know too much about their owners.

totetsu• 2 years ago

For me this whole things, including the previous use of AI backed social graph modelling build from digital surveillance of Palestinians, being use for as targeting intelligence, for drone strikes on people homes and families.. this whole thing chills me to the bone about ever wanting to use a social network, or a always connected mobile device ever again. Israel has taken the Dark Mirror SF speculations about the shifts in power and capability as the instruction manual and we're mostly ignoring the warnings. There nothing stopping this happening to any of us.

phirgate2• 2 years ago

Corrections:

1. It's not supply chain attack, it's terrorist attack. 2. It's not a clever move, it's a prevocation move

blueflow• 2 years ago

I think this is an actual "supply chain attack", while the downloading-malware-from-github-automated isn't.

jmward01• 2 years ago

In the short term, it's a smart strategy for Israel, but they've likely opened Pandora's box in the process.

Is the short term here a few days or maybe just hours? For the reasons you pointed out and more this is likely a strategic failure for a very short term military gain. The economics you pointed out. Politically this will not help them with any but their most extreme allies while enraging their enemies and giving them the moral high-ground with their peoples and the international community. Militarily this likely did little to actual readiness since the people wearing the pagers were probably mid to upper level people so they will heal and go back to desk jobs they were doing before. So an economic, political and military strategic fail. It would have been far better for Israel had this fizzled out or been found out before it triggered. Plausible deniability would have been easier and international outrage would have been minimal all while the C&C of their enemies would have gotten the intended message that they had deep capabilities that could cause disruption. Instead they actually pulled it off and now they get all the bad consequences with very few good ones. This was a bad idea executed, unfortunately, well.

csomar3• 2 years ago

This is not the first time Israel has pulled stuff like this. It blew back for a while in their face, but eventually people move on. If Israel recognize this event as existential for them, then anything is allowed including nuclear weapons.

erezsh• 2 years ago

That's a ridiculous take. No one involved Israel in this supply chain.

Also, there is no country in the world that would refrain from doing the same thing to their enemies, if they could pull it off. (big if)

Meanwhile, you can be sure the U.S. and China are putting back-doors in every device they can manage, and have been doing so for decades.

ileonichwiesz• 2 years ago

I’d prefer a device with a Chinese backdoor to a device with Israeli remote explosives any day.

mupuff12348• 2 years ago

It could also act as an ad - Israel is capable of James Bond level stuff, their tech must be great.

red_admiral• 2 years ago

Everyone should be keeping an eye on all their supply chains all the time, Israel-connected or not. Especially for military (or paramilitary) applications.

It reminds me a bit of when after 9/11, some of the reaction in Israel (as well as shock and sympathy) was "Of course we have locked cockpit doors, marshals on planes and other security features on ElAl. We're not barbarians!"

Also, (Hagelin) Crypto AG. Just because it's in Switzerland doesn't mean you shouldn't be paranoid.

maxglute2• 2 years ago

replicate this tactic

Permissible behavior normalized in this conflict is going to make future wars pretty ugly.

EdwardDiego• 2 years ago

The fact that they attacked them via their communication network that was intended to avoid Israeli surveillance, is irregular warfare at its finest.

The main injury inflicted on individuals was psychological - we got into your supply chain this far. Also, your attempts to avoid us failed.

But at an org level? They just disabled the entire comms system, whether through explosions, or by making people scared of explosions.

What's the contingency plan for this in Hezbollah? And will it have credence, given their last grand idea of "let's use pagers to avoid the Israelis" ended with a large number of simultaneous explosions?

It's a very clever attack from a psychological POV.

petertodd3• 2 years ago

The main injury inflicted on individuals was psychological

Have you seen the footage(0) from hospitals? It's likely that hundreds of Hezbollah members lost hands, eyes, etc. That will degrade their military effectiveness significantly, especially the people who were blinded. And remember that Hezbollah is trying(1) to prevent more footage of the attack from getting out, so what we've seen publicly quite likely underplays the full extent of it.

Sure, maybe you could argue that the "main" effect in terms of total numbers was psychological. But we shouldn't understate how many Hezbollah members were directly given life-long injuries that will make them ineffective forever. That's a huge win for Israel.

0) https://x.com/Osint613/status/1836040863195029530 1) https://x.com/Saul_Sadka/status/1836039347210002899

rasz• 2 years ago

communication network that was intended to avoid Israeli surveillance

Reuters even covered conversion to pagers two months ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pagers-drones-how-...

chii4• 2 years ago

other major producers could replicate this tactic

it's an inefficient tactic that actual terrorists won't employ tbh. Infiltrating manufacturers just to place small explosives isn't terror inducing - and you want the recipient of the explosion to know who it came from for a terrorist attack to be effective.

Israel did it to limit the amount of collateral (instead of shooting a missile or bomb, which would require a much larger radius of damage).

Shocka1• 2 years ago

I may have missed key facts about this operation, but who said Israel is part of the supply chain? Why not just intercept the truck/plane on it's way to delivery and insert the explosives on the fly? This seems much more practical IMO.

EasyMark2• 2 years ago

I don’t think they were thinking long term. Most of this, I believe, has been Netanyahu keeping his coalition together longer to stay out of court and potentially prison.

bluefishinit• 2 years ago

I don't think the Times Of Israel is an unbiased source. This isn't trustworthy reporting.

izwasm• 2 years ago

8 year old girl was dead there, not only hezbollah members uses it, hospitals uses it too

wsc981• 2 years ago

If it's a child sitting on the lap with her father, and her father is related to Hezbollah (and as such carrying a pager), this stuff could happen, I think.

All in all horrible to be honest ...

morkalork4• 2 years ago

Apparently a message was sent to the pagers right before exploding. I saw in a couple videos where the victim looked down at their hip and angled it to see the screen. It makes sense as a trick to ensure the target is close by when it goes off, but a kid could just as easily pick it up off a table after hearing it buzz.

Waterluvian• 2 years ago

As I'm trying to better understand the situation from a technology perspective, I'm curious: has anyone experienced a lithium battery catastrophically failing during use (not charging) and without plenty of warning (ie. gets warm, hot, scalding)?

My experience has been that at worst, they overheat over minutes to hours, and then hiss, smoke, pop, and catch fire.

I guess what I'm wondering is: is it at all plausible that this happened without the use of some amount of added explosives? (edit: I saw a few videos. I cannot imagine a mobile lithium battery is capable of such a sudden and violent explosion)

tptacek41• 2 years ago

It's probably going to turn out to be supply chain and explosives.

zelias• 2 years ago

I am for some reason reminded of this classic scene from The Wire [1] where a detective sells a trove of preemptively wiretapped burner cell phones to a drug organization

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDalKxcLQC8

ofcrpls• 2 years ago

Dark Wire by Joseph Cox came out this earlier in the summer that covers the 2010s version of this with an Android phone company being stood up as a replacement for Blackberries

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59644256-dark-wire

dewey• 2 years ago

Really good book, I've just finished it a few weeks ago and can recommend it.

carstenhag• 2 years ago

Also related, but rather a malware attack: Europol/French Police compromising all Encrochat phones in 2020.

onlyrealcuzzo3• 2 years ago

For those who don't know, "EncroChat was a Europe-based communications network and service provider that offered modified smartphones allowing encrypted communication among subscribers. It was used primarily by organized crime members to plan criminal activities."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncroChat

hydrox24• 2 years ago

The Australian Federal Police and the US FBI launched a similar attack a few years ago where they sold a few thousand phones to underworld figures. The phones had an apparently encrypted and hidden chat app pre-installed on them which was feeding all the messages and data to the police.[0]

[0] https://www.afp.gov.au/about-us/history/unique-stories/opera...

apienx• 2 years ago

"These devices don't appear to be designed to be lethal.[..] They are, for the most part, low charge so not packing enough to actually kill somebody.[..] Let's not forget that this comes on the same day that Israel has extended its war aims to including expelling Hezbollah basically from the border." -- BBC's Security Correspondent Frank Gardner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNEb-dY3tRY

dredmorbius10• 2 years ago

Just to put some numbers on that, ToI are presently reporting 9 deaths and 2,800 injuries (those numbers are of course preliminary and very much in flux), which taking the 2nd value as a denominator would be a <1% lethality rate. The BBC's characterisation does seem to be accurate.

<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-september-17-2024/>

rany_2• 2 years ago

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link to a gory video, but there is commonly circulating video of a pager detonating in a grocery store. There are a few people around the man but only the man appears to be impacted, all bystanders seem OK.

Media is reporting that most casualties are caused by the pager detonating while driving. Obviously because it would impact other drivers that happen to be around the now incapacitated driver.

Qem4• 2 years ago

Let's not forget that this comes on the same day that Israel has extended its war aims to including expelling Hezbollah basically from the border.

Also in the anniversary of WWII hero Folke Bernadotte assassination by Zionists. See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-...

chrisco2552• 2 years ago

While a clever attack it's also highly likely there was collateral damage to nonviolent or noninvolved bystanders.

bigbinary2• 2 years ago

Already confirmed as there is one 8 year old girl reportedly in the fatalities. This attack will add to the stereotype that Israel attacks indiscriminately.

autoexec• 2 years ago

Is "stereotype" the right word when it accurately describes what's been happening? Amnesty International, the UN, and even the president of the United States have described their attacks as "indiscriminate".

judah• 2 years ago

Watch some of the videos, they are remarkably targetted. One man is standing at a checkout line in a grocery store, 2 women near him. He looks at his pager before it explodes. The women around him are unharmed.

kamikazeturtles• 2 years ago

If the man is unarmed, I don't think they can be considered a legitimate target. If that is the case, then you could argue all Israelis who have a military background are legitimate targets and that includes most of the population.

onlyrealcuzzo3• 2 years ago

Link to the video (which AFAICT contains no gore, but is obviously not pleasant):

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/17/world/video/hezbollah-pagers-...

chrisco2552• 2 years ago

That's just the videos that have been published and the ones that happened to be captured by CCTV. If 1000 devices were indiscriminately detonated, even a 5% collateral damage rate would mean up to 50 innocent people harmed, maimed, or killed. At 15%, 150, and so forth.

negativeonehalf2• 2 years ago

Definitely sad when there is collateral damage. But I don't see how it is possible to fight a war with absolutely zero collateral damage - do you? Hezbollah started firing rockets at Israel on Oct 7 before they even responded.

It is better not to fight a war at all, but this is not always an option.

elintknower• 2 years ago

I wonder if this is possible in devices that actually use a small asic to handle all aspects of battery control. They're even more complex than a BMS, for instance macbook batteries have had these for around 20 years [0]. They're even common in vapes and vape batteries. I have to wonder if these asics can be bypassed with malware?

Seems like the cells in these pagers were massively over-discharged and then allowed to be over charged? Potentially a capacitor used to drive the vibration motor was then used to cause the battery to catastrophically explode?

0 - https://squidgeefish.com/projects/a1175-battery-hacking/

hpone91• 2 years ago

Someone must have watched Knock Off from 1998

janmo3• 2 years ago

Intelligence agencies put their bugs within the hardware of electronic devices you order online.

If you believe being the target of an intelligence agency never order anything online. They will put the bug inside, especially if it is an electronic device such as a phone/laptop/TV/coffee machine.

Best solution is to go buy it from a random store and have a good home security system.

Also weigh your electronic devices laptop/phone to check if the weight differs from its original weight, it should not deviate.

diggan8• 2 years ago

Also weigh your electronic devices laptop/phone to check if the weight differs from its original weight, it should not deviate.

What kind of errors are acceptable here? Or maybe better, how accurate are the measurements given from the manufacturer?

I have a iPhone 12 Mini for example, Apple says (https://support.apple.com/en-us/111877) it should weigh 135 grams. Measuring with a scale of 0.01g precision (which is also calibrated right before) I get 133.5g, so it's ~1.5g off.

Measuring a 50g weight gives me exactly 50g, so the scale is correct, so either the weight of my phone is off, or Apple doesn't give exact weight.

janmo3• 2 years ago

I guess it is better to weigh it just after the purchase from a random store and from there the weight should never change.

dbtablesorrows• 2 years ago

Are you in hezbollah as well?

fwip2• 2 years ago

Where do they do this? Do they pick up the package at the post office distribution center?

janmo3• 2 years ago

In my case they did it at the store where I came to pick it up. That's how I got aware of it.

The espionage agency in question was the french DGSI.

kart23• 2 years ago

someone in the US government is probably freaking out about all these iphones and macbooks made in china right now.

xeonmc• 2 years ago

Evocative of the "power user" scene from Iron Sky[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXWovt5-wfk

tptacek41• 2 years ago

Probably not so much, no.

walleeee• 2 years ago

Some in the US government do tend to project their own bloody-mindedness onto the Chinese, yes

hollerith5• 2 years ago

Actually, I trust Apple's hardware security enough that I think it is probably impossible for anyone in China (even though they have physical access to the devices) to alter an iPhone or Macbook so that its own electronics can be used to trigger any explosive the attacker might install in the device, so in addition to an explosive, the attacker would need to install his own radio receiver. And the attacker probably won't be able to use the device's electronics to eavesdrop on the device's user, so no ability to tell whether the user is in the group the attacker wants to target unless again the attacker installs his own electronics (including radio transmitter) to do the eavesdropping.

LincolnedList• 2 years ago

An Iphone should weigh X grams. I think you should be able to detect tampering by weighing it.

I don't whats the margin of error/variance that passes quality control.

talldayo13• 2 years ago

it is probably impossible for anyone in China (even though they have physical access to the devices) to alter an iPhone or Macbook so that its own electronics can be used to trigger any explosive the attacker might install in the device

It would be trivial for a Mossad-level adversary to get around this. The pager explosives were disguised inside the battery, not around it. If you replaced the iPhone's 4500mAh battery with a 3500mAh one containing RDX and a 3G radio, you'd have to be mega-paranoid before you noticed the difference.

This is exactly the sort of hubris modern intelligence agencies rely on in order to exploit your misplaced trust. Apple's hardware security, much like their software security, is mostly predicated on marketing and not the transparent or accountable defense of your device.

0x_rs• 2 years ago

Seems old pagers were replaced last month at the American University of Beirut. It may or may not have to do with this operation, but the timing seems very suspect. Those devices may have been tampered with explosives at some point before being distributed to the victims.

https://x.com/gazanotice/status/1836082218805891360

whimsicalism• 2 years ago

probably unrelated, lebanon is a big place

jakeinspace4• 2 years ago

It’s a very small place

timnetworks2• 2 years ago

https://x.com/AUBMC_Official/status/1836086847153320148

germandiago• 2 years ago

It was a cyberattack from Israel some rumours say.

sroussey3• 2 years ago

Did the pagers all receive the same text message before they exploded?

gmd632• 2 years ago

Another example of why outsourcing manufacturing is a national security concern, and how the absolute free market can lead "winners" to harm themselves by chasing "success" at all costs.

skapadia• 2 years ago

100% this.

knallfrosch3• 2 years ago

Do you think manufacturing pagers in Lebanon is a viable alternative?

bowmessage• 2 years ago

Undoubtedly, this attack has proven that it certainly is, at whatever cost.

dijit28• 2 years ago

The idea of the majority of manufacturing being external to a country is a little under 100 years old, yet people talk as if it is unthinkable.

drexlspivey• 2 years ago

Doesn't matter, they could have intercepted a shipment and done the same thing

postalrat• 2 years ago

It does matter if it would have been much more difficult to intercept the shipment that never left Lebanon.

mufasachan• 2 years ago

Arguably, it's off-topic, though I agree with the point. Lebanon has been struck by poverty, and as a result, they might have far fewer choices when it comes to providers in general. Manufacturing within Lebanon or trading with neighboring countries might not be affordable for them.

It’s important to take a step back before generalizing an economic or political statement that may not be applicable in other contexts. There are little chances that the supply chain in Lebanon is in the same state as Europe countries' ones, for instance. Thus, this is not another example.

gmd632• 2 years ago

Just because something is not affordable doesn't mean its affordable alternative is a viable option, especially when information asymmetries caused by foreign manufacture obscure plastic explosives in the devices or whatever triggered these.

It is the same attitude. "Outsourcing is the only way we can be competitive" / "Buying these cheap pagers is the only way we can afford it"

elteto3• 2 years ago

This almost reads like science fiction, what an incredible attack from a technical POV. A couple of thoughts:

1. The beepers were compromised and have been for a long time. I don't know how easy it is to exfiltrate data from them if they are receive-only devices. At any rate it shows that Israel is capable of intercepting and manipulating low-tech comms. What's left for Hezbollah to use?

2. The next step is to hack into hospital record systems and get a list of all patients admitted today.

spacephysics2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately innocent people were also harmed, don’t think a straight list will serve anyone

Honestly I doubt Israel/Mossad doesn’t know who is in Hezbollah, i think this is more of a direct attack (obviously) mixed with scare/terror benefit

elteto3• 2 years ago

I think the value is in knowing the network and cross-reference against it. Innocent bystanders or people who happened to just go to the hospital today will probably fall off during this process. Not to mention that you can filter out by the type of injury to get a more accurate list.

onlyrealcuzzo3• 2 years ago

1. The beepers were compromised and have been for a long time.

Where did you see this? Sources are saying that Hezbollah recently upgraded their pagers with the American University of Beirut on August 29:

https://x.com/gazanotice/status/1836082218805891360

Why would Israel have the ability to wipe out a good chunk of Hezbollah for years and just sat on it until now?

They are claiming 2750 injuries:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/17/dozens-of-hezbollah...

elteto3• 2 years ago

I wasn't thinking years, but months but I didn't know about the recent upgrade. At any rate, if the pagers allowed any data exfiltration they have been collecting that data since whenever the last upgrade was.

fabioborellini• 2 years ago

So they missed incapacitating a hospital, which changed to smart phones. Are you sure it was Mossad?

anonu4• 2 years ago

Hezbollah recently upgraded their pagers with the American University of Beirut

Please do not conflate Hezbollah and AUB.

The claim is that AUB medical school pagers were replaced a week or so ago. This is either pure coincidence, false or fake news to imply that AUB has Israeli operatives, or indeed that the pagers used were compromised and that the USA was aware of the impending attack and did not want to harm AUB medical staff - who probably are mostly not connected with Hezbollah.

Further reading: https://x.com/AUBMC_Official/status/1836086847153320148

EasyMark2• 2 years ago

It’s hard to believe none of these beepers have failed before this and the explosives found by a beeper repair person

beefnugs• 2 years ago

Yikes the "list of patients" thing is scariest part of all of this: if they feed that into some monster AI that creates new targets... I can only imagine the diminishing accuracy of who is really deserving of being targets

But that is exactly what modern AI-era big data warfare would look like. By its nature, and by choice, less accuracy / more innocent targets, but oh well

altacc4• 2 years ago

This makes an assumption that Israel cares about making it's list of targets as small as possible. Israel has shown over and over again that it is happy casting a very wide net when labelling people as legitimate targets, using fuzzy machine learning to label large numbers of people without any direct evidence. Israel also has a higher acceptance of the deaths of innocents than any other western aligned & supplied nation, literally happy if dozens or more civilians are killed in order to kill one member of Hamas or Hezbollah. They or their proxies then blame their opponents for the deaths of innocents, ignoring that the accepted rules of war are that civilian deaths should be minimized.

For sources, search for "Israel Lavender system" and pick your media source of choice.

himinlomax2• 2 years ago

I heard a story according to which a similar scheme was used in the Algerian war of independence, so these is more retro than scifi. Radio sets were left by the French military for the Algerians to grab. The explosive was hidden in the frame and components, and the trigger was a specific audio frequency. The device looked exactly like a stock military radio set if you disassembled it. So it's not that scifi.

bhouston4• 2 years ago

Seems like a harbrining of war, if the pager network was compromised, thus burns the compromised network and also harms a lot of people.

Most major newspapers in Israel are saying that Netanyahu wants an invasion of Southern Lebanon:

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bje3pjv60

https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/article-820399

https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-general-said-pushing-for-g...

bufferoverflow• 2 years ago

Lebanon has been shooting rockets at Israel for a while now. They already are at war. It's just Israel is very strategic about its steps.

bhouston4• 2 years ago

Lebanon has been shooting rockets at Israel for a while now.

Correction: Israel and Lebanon have been firing across the border for a while. More Israeli attacks on Lebanon than the other way around and more Lebanese dead too.

Details:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/27/mapping-7400-cross-...

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/bfa9/live/320f24...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv2gj544x65o

And lots more details here:

"Between 21 October 2023 and 20 February 2024 the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) recorded an estimated 7,948 incidents of artillery fire from the south of the Blue Line (from Israel to Lebanon) and 978 incidents of artillery fire from the north side (from Lebanon to Israel)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–Hezbollah_conflict_(202...

lxgr5• 2 years ago

if the pager network was compromised, thus burns the compromised network

I wouldn't necessarily call this type of attack a network compromise. All it takes is knowing the target phone numbers and sending a specific message, which is a paging network working exactly as designed. Phone detonated bombs have been a thing for a long time too.

Calling it a hardware supply chain attack seems more accurate.

elendee• 2 years ago

it does seem like a purely escalatory move. wounding but not killing 1000+ of your deepest adversaries, slow clap... I'm sure Hezbollah will give up now that their pagers are destroyed.

mmastrac• 2 years ago

That's an impressive supply-chain hack. Spend years showing how insecure modern telecom devices are and scare your enemy into going old-school, receive-only. Set up a shell company to sell pagers to your enemy's shell company. Give them devices implanted with a small explosive charge pointed inward, knowing they will be worn around the waist most of the time.

Hack the backend server, send a coordinated page to all the pagers at the same time. You've just injured and identified most of your enemies, incapacitated them, completely broken their communication network and effectively given you weeks of disarray to do whatever you want to further disrupt them.

You have to hand it to them -- it's a clever strategy with minimal casualties outside of your enemy. This is a Stuxnet-level hack that we'll probably never fully understand.

dmvdoug• 2 years ago

Just Mossad Mossadin’.

koolba4• 2 years ago

Hack the backend server, send a coordinated page to all the pagers at the same time.

You likely don’t even need to hack anything if you coordinate based on time. A built in clock would eliminate the need for any external signal and work in a, no pun intended, dead zone.

If the pager itself is hacked, the software could also pretend to receive a page a moment before detonation to maximize the chance the device is held with the receiver in the open.

ars11• 2 years ago

It wasn't time based. Videos show the pager making some kind of signal or message that caused the person holding it to look at it.

grotorea4• 2 years ago

Is the pager thing really recent? Because if this was done before the current war they couldn't have known when they wanted it to explode.

make3• 2 years ago

if you physically control the pager I don't even think it's called hacking anymore. you can change the hardware and software willy nilly. put an extra SIM that you control in there, and call it. put a radio receiver. a timer. heck, a dog whistle audio detector, you blow it and they blow up. infinite possibilities.

bilinguliar• 2 years ago

It most likely just received a code message that triggered the device.

kranke1553• 2 years ago

Someone will eventually spill the beans on how it was done. They always do.

underdeserver10• 2 years ago

30 years from now, maybe.

nashashmi2• 2 years ago

It is a well known hack.

superxpro12• 2 years ago

FWIW, AP is reporting over 2800 injured, 200 seriously, with only 8 dead.

aksss3• 2 years ago

Seeing some video from one of the hospitals, there's a lot of variety to the injuries. It looks like some people were looking at the pager when it exploded (injury to face and hand), some were wearing it on hip, some in pocket, some probably in an across-the-chest fanny pack.

It would seem this attack has managed to kill some, maim many, tag all, terrorize, and disrupt.

sph• 2 years ago

You have to hand it to them

Given the context and peculiar choice of words, this reminds me of a classic @dril tweet

https://x.com/dril/status/831805955402776576?s=46

rendang2• 2 years ago

TBH, I would "hand it to" any group who pulled off this particular attack, even ISIL.

tootie2• 2 years ago

minimal casualties

We'll see about that. Some of the footage indicates the targets were all just out and about in public. I think it's likely there will be collateral damage. I assume it didn't happen since it's not being reported, but what if one of them was on a plane?

anvuong• 2 years ago

I doubt you can receive any signal on the plane. In the airport maybe.

aqme28• 2 years ago

minimal casualties outside of your enemy.

"Thousands injured." I'm not convinced it was as super-targeted as you claim.

pdabbadabba6• 2 years ago

FWIW, Hezbollah has thousands of members.

From Wikipedia [1]:

Hezbollah does not reveal its armed strength. The Dubai-based Gulf Research Centre estimated in 2006 that Hezbollah's armed wing comprises 1,000 full-time Hezbollah members, along with a further 6,000–10,000 volunteers.[200] According to the Iranian Fars News Agency, Hezbollah has up to 65,000 fighters.[201] In October 2023, Al Jazeera cited Hezbollah expert Nicholas Blanford as estimating that Hezbollah has at least 60,000 fighters, including full-time and reservists, and that it had increased its stockpile of missiles from 14,000 in 2006 to about 150,000.

And this is just the armed portion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah

CydeWeys9• 2 years ago

You underestimate how many members Hezbollah has, and also, how unreliable these kinds of initial reports tend to be.

captainkrtek2• 2 years ago

You have to hand it to them -- it's a clever strategy with minimal casualties outside of your enemy

I agree it’s clever, but there are reports now of thousands wounded. Feels like a lot of collateral risk, if these people who were targeted were out and about (grocery shopping, bank, etc.)

ignoramous7• 2 years ago

Looks like Lebanese civilians have indeed been injured/maimed; but it appears cool to some since it is an "impressive supply-chain hack", so let's leave it at that and not call it terrorism.

pdabbadabba6• 2 years ago

I have no doubt that innocent civilians have been injured. But it's also worth noting that there are thousands of Hezbollah members, so the number alone doesn't necessarily tell us much about the number of civilians injured. (Similar to the casualty figures that come out of Gaza.)

I hate the idea of any innocent civilian being injured. But it might also be instructive to consider the alternative: if Israel wanted to achieve similar results via a conventional war against Hezbollah, it seems virtually guaranteed that far more innocent people would have been injured and killed—not to mention the Israeli civilians on the other side, whose lives also matter.

fshbbdssbbgdd• 2 years ago

I wonder if people are unaware that Hezbollah and Israel have been shooting rockets at each other for months. There are roughly 1000 deaths in the conflict and hundreds of thousands of civilians evacuated. If we’re talking about harms to civilians, this incident is probably small compared to the war overall.

raxxorraxor14• 2 years ago

These are Hezbollah pagers and Hezbollah only exists to terrorize Israel and it is their sole purpose. Of course there is still a danger of collateral risk, but I don't think it can get much more targeted.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 2 years ago

You've just injured and identified most of your enemies, incapacitated them, completely broken their communication network and effectively given you weeks of disarray to do whatever you want to further disrupt them.

And affected their recruitment. Because of how pagers are worn, a significant number of injuries are going to be genital injuries.

Given, that your primary recruits are young men, that is important.

In that demographic, the young men may actually fear non-lethal genital injuries more than they actually fear death.

jnmandal• 2 years ago

Hack the backend server, send a coordinated page to all the pagers at the same time.

I worked on these before and I don't think you'd need to hack anything at all to send a page. Its just a broadcast. Especially if you had access to the receiver as they seem to have had, I can't imagine they compromised the actual Hezbollah transmission tower.

CydeWeys9• 2 years ago

Yeah I mean it's basically just like mass-sending a spam text, no? All they need to know is the phone numbers of the pagers. Or even just the number range from which the pager numbers were assigned, and then spam the entire range. Spammers have simple enough software that can do all this; it doesn't seem like a sticking point for Mossad.

nashashmi2• 2 years ago

I dont think you have to hand it to them. I just think that they have to know who the people are. And a code has to be uploaded to the pagers that cause the explosion.

There have been several presentations on this before. It was for old cell phones.

bigtoe416• 2 years ago

The shell company isn't a strict requirement, and I'd wager less likely. Infiltrating the delivery process would be easier and would instead require knowing about the pager purchase and being able to swap the actual package for an alternative package. Theoretically all of this is possible with some data interception to discover the pager order, a team to construct the exploding pagers, a person to deliver the exploding pagers, and a person to intercept the actual pagers (which could be the same person delivering the exploding pagers).

whoitwas3• 2 years ago

Minimal what? They just indiscriminately bombed anyone near anyone with this branded pager. It's really disgusting to see you marveling at mass civilian destruction or terrorism.

markus_zhang10• 2 years ago

Rumor that this is the company that manufactures the pagers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Apollo

TheRealPomax• 2 years ago

Title really should say "pagers", not "devices".

meindnoch2• 2 years ago

Reminds me of two things:

1. Mossad killed the chief bombmaker of Hamas with an exploding phone in 1996: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash

2. My grandma used to say not to wear my phone on me, especially close to my heart or my balls, because she thought it was dangerous somehow. Turns out she was right!

moussasissoko• 2 years ago

Yahya Ayyash was a bombmaker for Hamas, not Hezbollah.

meindnoch2• 2 years ago

True. Mea culpa!

fernandotakai• 2 years ago

it was not the mossad, it was the shin bet.

m3kw9• 2 years ago

A gram of c4 will do it?

Sam6late• 2 years ago

At the cashier, one video clip shows a guy paying then he looks at the massage that beeped his Appolo pager, then it exploded, this trigger message is supported further with first responders' statements on large numbers of those treated for impact on eyes.

booleandilemma• 2 years ago

It reminds me of the movie Law Abiding Citizen.

Check it out if you haven't already: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1197624/

maratumba• 2 years ago

Gives the term "remote code execution" a new meaning.

bawolff2• 2 years ago

Cant help but be reminded of that james mickens article about the mossad vs not mossad threat model https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf where he joking says that mossad will replace your cellphone with a blick of uranium (as a joke to imply you shouldnt worry about nation state actor type threats when building a stupid web app that nobody cares about, because its impossible)

dzonga• 2 years ago

one of the best things I have read this week. thanks

bawolff2• 2 years ago

If you like that, i highly reccomend his talk on ai risks. https://youtu.be/ajGX7odA87k?si=-NMySaJzBdx5wlf2 . Half serious talk half stand up commedy routine.

fredgrott• 2 years ago

Part of the context is that they use a different communication network which is probably why they were targeted in that specific way...

Overcharging batteries would be the hack....not suggesting someone do this but said strategy works with both acid based and lithium batteries...

dagaci4• 2 years ago

J*sus. I fully plan to stop going around with my iphone everywhere (until this is fully explained). We could all be 1 glitch (think CrowdStrike) away from getting lithium exploded mysteriously.

i2km• 2 years ago

So, if the method was to substitute the batteries for ones containing explosives, then how were they triggered simultaneously?

Wouldn't this also require some additional HW/SW in the pagers to trigger the devices? Otherwise, if it was just battery terminals connecting to the battery, how would a remote signal trigger them?

Or maybe it's as simple as the adulterated batteries containing timers and thus not needing external triggering?

mzs• 2 years ago

timer?

ComputerGuru2• 2 years ago

There are now over two thousand injuries and at least one nine year old girl dead. This was a reckless attack, a war crime, and a blatant disregard of international law.

You’re not targeting pacemakers embedded only in the chest cavities of known Hezbollah militants but devices often left around family and children. Hezbollah is a massive political entity with probably more non-combatants than combatants. The pagers are used by accountants, doctors, civil salarymen, it workers, and others that are not legal targets under IHL.

EDIT:

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...

Among those killed is an eight-year-old girl from Bekka Valley, Abiad said, according to Al Jazeera.
At least 2,800 people have been wounded, he added, and more than 200 are in critical condition.

tgv• 2 years ago

2000? The article speaks of dozens at best, and no 9 year old girl.

ComputerGuru2• 2 years ago

Yes, hence the "there are now" part. I updated my comment with a source.

I mixed up "nine fatalities" with "eight year old girl" to get "nine year old girl". Mea culpa.

ok1234562• 2 years ago

Yep. This is state-sponsored terrorism.

mola• 2 years ago

If the pagers all belong to military targets is this a war crime? It means basically that all war is a crime. Which from an idealistic point of view I agree, but that's not how the world works.

Rockets are fired to the Israeli north for a year now, about a 200k civilians are evacuated for a year now because the rockets are mostly randomly targeted.

a 3 yo Israeli baby is still held hostage by hamas, never meeting the red cross.

Are these war crimes?

gojomo2• 2 years ago

And you thought "Key Escrow" or "Chat Control" was bad!

Future maximum-security states may just require every mobile phone to have an explosive charge pre-installed, with the detonation-codes only available to the authorities, of course.

Then when they detect a device in active use by a [terrorist|child-pornographer|subversive|tax-evader], ka-blewie! Problem solved at the press of a button.

See also: 'Black Mirror' s3e6, 'Hated in the Nation'

guerrilla• 2 years ago

I have a better idea. Every politician has a bomb collar tied to their approval rating. ;)

dredmorbius10• 2 years ago

Cookie cutters:

<https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age>

cryptonector6• 2 years ago

Italo Calvino wrote a short story about politicians having to sacrifice parts of their bodies in order to hold positions of power, like you'd have to have a hand chopped off to serve one term, a leg to serve another, and so on.

cryptonector6• 2 years ago

Stanislav Lem wrote a short story about a tyrant that made his subjects wear highly enriched uranium earmuffs so that if more than two of them got together they would assemble a critical mass.

https://culture.pl/en/work/uranium-ears-stanislaw-lem

lvl155• 2 years ago

We live in a world where iPhones get shipped directly from China. I know this is pretty much conspiratorial but if China wanted to hack a bunch of iPhones in the hands of government officials, there’s nothing to stop them. This episode made me realize how loose security is around supply chains.

campuscodi• 2 years ago

Looks like a hardware supply chain attack: https://goachronicle.com/hezbollah-members-pagers-exploded-i...

>GoaChronicle through its intelligence network has learned that Israeli intelligence successfully intercepted a shipment of pager batteries that had been ordered from B&H Photo. The order was placed from Lebanon. Acting on a confirmed tip, the intelligence agency seized the shipment and covertly modified the batteries. Small, undetectable explosives known as Kiska 3 were inserted into the battery casings and connected to the battery wires via a discreet chip. The pager model was Rugged Pager AR924 IP67. The operation code word was ‘Below the Belt’.

alecco2• 2 years ago

This sounds very likely.

tootie2• 2 years ago

B&H?!?! The giant store in Manhattan famously run by Orthodox Jews? If that's confirmed it's going to be protested into dust pretty soon.

EDIT: I see an addenda to the article that B&H are denying any involvement. We'll see how it plays out. True or not, the rumor will be flying.

tzs2• 2 years ago

If it is confirmed I'd expect it to actually boost B&H's business, as long as B&H didn't actually know of or participate in the tampering with the shipment.

As you note B&H is well known for being run by Orthodox Jews. So why the heck would Hezbollah, an organization that wants to destroy Israel, buy their batteries from B&H?

It suggests that B&H is a really great place to buy things, so much better than the alternatives that even if dealing with Jews goes against your fundamental beliefs it is worth it.

bewaretheirs3• 2 years ago

B&H Photo

Okay, that pretty much guarantees that somebody at the Goa Chronicle fell hook, line, and sinker for a bit of internet satire.

EDIT:

It would also appear that the good folks at the Goa Chronicle failed to check a Yiddish-English dictionary.

astrange2• 2 years ago

Isn't that a joke? I don't think Hezbollah orders from B&H.

wg0• 2 years ago

Do we really know that these were explosives or lithium ion batteries on their own can be this dangerous?

switch0072• 2 years ago

The title is egregiously bad

dredmorbius10• 2 years ago

Email suggested improvements to mods at hn@ycombinator.com

switch0072• 2 years ago

I meant the article headline, sorry

system2• 2 years ago

"Israel managed to hack the portable pagers and cause them to explode" sounds like they uploaded firmware to make the device explode. In fact, it was a supply chain infiltration and they modified the devices with explosives inside. It's weird to call it hack.

briandw• 2 years ago

Let's assume that the battery in the pager is replaced with half C4 half battery. AA battery weighs about 20-25g, so 12.5g C4 total. 12.5g of C4 has roughly 84,000J of energy. For comparison, a 62 grain 5.56 NATO round has about 1,700 J of kinetic energy. The C4 is undirected, so the target is getting a fraction of the impact, but that much C4 detonating near your body is going to do some serious damage.

markus_zhang10• 2 years ago

A question for more knowledgeable users: What CPU does Apollo AP-900 Pager use? I tried to search the Internet but found nothing.

kazinator• 2 years ago

How do you go from "dozens" in the headline to "several" in the opening paragraph, while respecting yourself as journalistic writer?

nirav72• 2 years ago

Certainly lot cheaper than a missile or two.

passion__desire2• 2 years ago

Mossad said - "Explain to me why it is more noble to kill 10,000 men in battle than a dozen at dinner."

christkv• 2 years ago

Ok so they have incapacitated a large swath of the organisations leadership. Are they planning to roll in now ?

chgs• 2 years ago

If this can happen then there no way the TSA and other groups would be able to detect it.

mrvenkman• 2 years ago

Nothing in that particular report says anything about the pagers exploding individually. It may of been a box, labelled as containing pagers, delivered to a group of people and detonated in one location.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

There are videos on twitter and NY Times article explains more

Pagers people had on their pants exploded

Apocryphon3• 2 years ago

Amazingly enough, the concept of hacking personal communications devices to explode was explored recently in the "phone strike" scene in Jackpot!, an Amazon MGM Studios movie released a month ago.

https://x.com/obdmpod/status/1836087414290284588

paxys• 2 years ago

And Kingsman: The Secret Service from 2014.

Apocryphon3• 2 years ago

Weren't those surgical implants, though? A bit different, not an innocuous everyday gadget turned deadly. More of a Laputan Machine.

eigenspace• 2 years ago

This is nothing new. Israel has done attacks like this since the 60s.

Apocryphon3• 2 years ago

They've remotely triggered multiple consumer devices simultaneously?

misiti37802• 2 years ago

here is how they did it (supposedly):

https://x.com/Osint613/status/1836111109742354507

misiti37802• 2 years ago

cool downvote - why lol

Hermandw2• 2 years ago

Amir Tsarfati on Telegram: The updated numbers:

4000 wounded of which 400 in critical conditions

Al Jazeera from a Lebanese security source:

The pagers were brought to Lebanon 5 months ago. They were boobytrapped in advance. Each device contained an explosive weighing no more than 20 grams.

AustinDev3• 2 years ago

20 grams that's wild. You could only produce these kinds of effects from a 'military grade' explosive like CL-20 or similar.

beezle2• 2 years ago

per a calculator on unsaferguard.org 20g of RDX

Injury/Fatality to Personnel Range (m) Fatal Distance 0.64 Lung Damage 1.02 Eardrum Rupture 2.63

chemeril• 2 years ago

20 grams of C4 or similar plastic explosive would be more than adequate to produce the effects seen. CL-20 wouldn't be a good choice for this deployment: it's not particularly stable for rough handling even with a good phlegmatizing blend, and tends to decompose at the temps one would expect a pager to be exposed to (hot car, etc).

beezle2• 2 years ago

And given where pagers are typically kept, future pro-creation of many wounded will be in doubt.

sixQuarks2• 2 years ago

Isn’t this a war crime?

oytis5• 2 years ago

Why would it be?

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs• 2 years ago

Which one more specifically?

knallfrosch3• 2 years ago

First of all, the discussion is purely hypothetical – noone ever put George W Bush in prison for his Iraq invasion. No matter what you, or the world, thinks of it, it's not going to happen.

Second, what Israel and its enemies are doing is far from the land warfare the laws were written for. Do all Hezbollah soldiers wear uniforms indicating their affiliation and rank? Yeah, I thought so.

Sakos2• 2 years ago

Who exactly is Amir Tsarfati and why is this a trusted source for numbers? I can't find anything reliable about him by search engine.

zelphirkalt• 2 years ago

They must really be in desperate need for more conflict to keep their population at bay. For Netanyahu certainly conflicts come at a convenient time. First he tried to swing himself up to dictator like figure, taking away power from judiciary, tens of thousands of people go to protest. Then October 7 happens. Suddenly a war keeps him in power. Now that that has been going on, and hundreds of thousands are on the streets, they are doing many things to provoke another conflict/war. I think if they fail to keep Israel in a war-like state, his days will be over quickly. He knows that, so he tries to escalate. Not that Iran and their allies aren't provoking and escalating either, but for Netanyahu this is all very convenient.

tptacek41• 2 years ago

The opposite is probably more true. By the admission of some of Netanyahu's own command staff, the only reason the IDF is still committed in Gaza is to keep Netanyahu in power; as soon as Gaza is resolved, he's likely to be ousted (and then to face criminal charges). Israel cannot stay fully engaged in Gaza and open up a conventional military front in southern Lebanon. If we're using this kind of logic --- message board logic, let's be clear --- today's action harms Netanyahu's immediate interests, by hastening the point at which the IDF will substantially withdraw from Gaza.

underdeserver10• 2 years ago

I'm pretty sure that if the IDF is committed in Lebanon it's no different from Gaza, as far as the ousting process is concerned.

Do you have a source for that command staff admission?

There are still hostages in Gaza. Until they're either released or proven dead I would guess Gaza would still be counted as "unresolved".

spacephysics2• 2 years ago

Like George Carlin said, “you don’t need a formal conspiracy when interests converge”

There are other governments who also benefit from war in the region that most likely have a hand in encouraging, directly or indirectly, for continued conflict.

passion__desire2• 2 years ago

I think this is the case of both sides knew about each other's plan all along and yet Oct 7 happened. What could be the reason for both sides to execute it. Just to find out what happens?

shmatt5• 2 years ago

Unfortunately Netanyahu has gained and lost the prime minister position multiple times without wars. He's just somewhat popular. Between his first government in 1995 and today, people forget there were prime ministers Sharon, Olmert, Barak, Lapid, Bennet, just 18 months before 10/07 his opposition was in power. Did they not have any part of ignoring the preperations?

Even if he would have lost his position if 10/07 never happened, history has shown he always ends up back in leadership due to a million+ voters for his own party, and millions of votes for other religious and right wing parties.

People can rightfully hate them all they want, but he has the votes, and Israel doesn't have a limit on the number of times you can be prime minister

This is only half joking but the only "solution" to the Netanyahu problem is to replace the voters

CydeWeys9• 2 years ago

You're forgetting that tens of thousands of Israelis from the north of Israel have been homeless and internally displaced since shortly after October 7th when Hezbollah started indiscriminately targeting Israeli residential neighborhoods in North Israel with rockets, artillery, and ATGMs, killing several civilians. This is not a tenable state of affairs, not militarily, nor politically. Israel is going to address it one way or another, one day or another, and perhaps they're starting now.

So in one sense you're right that it's to keep their population at bay -- because their population is absolutely fed up with the situation in North Israel and how people have been homeless for nearly a year now and a huge swath of the northern part of the country, will billions of dollars in real estate in total, is uninhabitable. And if this government can't provide security for its citizens, which is the most important thing a government can do by the way, then it will be replaced with one that can.

esjeon6• 2 years ago

Yup, Netanyahu is certainly taking advantage of the situation to secure his position, at the cost of innocent lives and the expense of the United States. As long as Israel remains committed to its purely-Jewish-state ideal, the conflict will continue, draining more money from US taxpayers.

abdellah123• 2 years ago

Thousands now were injured. This is a massive scale (terrorist) attack

ksaj3• 2 years ago

The reason you are asked to prove your laptop can boot at airport security is that batteries and bombs have similar densities.

It would be pretty straight forward to rig a pager to run off of one battery while the other is an explosive charge made to look like the actual battery.

yonran• 2 years ago

So how do you think that airport security will adjust to the widespread knowledge that you can hide an explosive alongside the battery?

ksaj3• 2 years ago

Especially now that it is abundantly clear that a pager's batteries are large enough to be replaced by quite an effective bomb. And cell phones are a fair amount larger than pagers.

It seems the pager bombs only killed the users. But they also harmed a lot of people around them.

ben7799• 2 years ago

They have other ways to detect explosives.

I've had my stuff tested for explosives, and it did not involve turning anything on.

ksaj3• 2 years ago

Yes, they also use that sniffer wand over the keyboard. And some airports use dogs. Some rely on Xray and similar scans.

Not every airport does exactly the same thing. Some do multiple things. I don't think it was even implied that all airports are exactly the same. My point was about density of battery and explosive material, and not about these "other ways."

For that matter, the xrays and other visualization scans also show the density similarities between batteries and explosives. And that density was the entirety of my point.

devit• 2 years ago

I wonder why they did this, thus revealing that they compromised a lot of devices and losing that capability, instead of quietly continuing to monitor them and using their location to perform attacks via other means if needed.

Maybe they hope the psychological effect is a big deterrent?

dangerboysteve• 2 years ago

Don't pagers just used AA or AAA batteries ?

danielodievich• 2 years ago

There was a really dumb but also really entertaining Awkwafina/John Cena movie that I watched recently called Jackpot https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26940324/. At one point in the middle of the movie one of the characters calls a 3 letter agency friend and asks them for a "Phone Strike on his location". There is a mob gathered outside of their room, and within 30 seconds everyone's phone blows up and the protagonists escape. The movie is R rated but obviously it's hollywood so instead of blown off fingers and holes in ribs that we see in Lebanon, its just someone's crotch is aflame, that's about it. But it was the first thing that jumped to me when I heard about it. Go hollywood!

jazzyjackson• 2 years ago

I love those two, thanks for the movie rec.

I have a working theory that real life 3 letter agency plots make it into Hollywood movies because intelligence agents and script writers hang out at the same bars. Likely a mix of intentionally planting tropes so that when someone claims the government is doing it they look like a conspiracy theorist who watched "The Rock" too many times, and retired folks having one too many whiskies and letting their secrets slip knowing that there's no way to prove it anyhow, and those make it into scripts just because they're good stories

piyh• 2 years ago

Wait for the "Tesla strike" in San Fran

vander_elst• 2 years ago

From a legal perspective, are there any regulations on these kinds of attacks? Meaning, are they allowed? Are they considered a war crime or maybe this is still a gray area?

oytis5• 2 years ago

It's not that there is a list of approved ways to attack your enemy. Inventing new ways to take enemy by surprise is absolutely a part of warfare. What's important from legal perspective is the ratio between military effect and collateral damage. In this case so far it seems it was better than if conventional warfare was used.

HL33tibCe73• 2 years ago

It surely must be in violation of international law due to its potentially reckless/indiscriminate nature

ebcode• 2 years ago

If the pagers had been equipped with lasers that caused blindness, there is a Geneva Convention protocol going back to 1995[0].

I would like to think that the spirit behind that protocol is that the intent to cause permanent blindness in your opponent should be considered a crime. And not that it's not a crime so long as you don't use a laser to do it.

So you can put me in the camp of "this should be considered a war crime", even if it's not in any books yet.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Certain_Conventi...

hajile7• 2 years ago

If the pager was sent a message that would encourage the soldier to bring the pager to their face, it would certainly fall under an intentionally blinding attack.

worik• 2 years ago

Breaks my heart to see high tech used to create mayhem rather than improve the world

interestica• 2 years ago

Are pagers allowed on airplanes? Most modern digital devices also carry a sealed Lithium ion pack....

ajb2• 2 years ago

Tangentially related - Hezbollah used pagers because they could not trust mobiles. One reason is that mobile basebands are locked down: if they weren't, it's quite possible that by now someone would have implemented a baseband firmware which preserves opsec, that could be used on (rooted) phones . That is probably one of the reasons why governments are hostile to modifiable radio firmware.

ummonk6• 2 years ago

Looking at pictures of mangled devices, it would seem to confirm that they were Motorola Gold Apollo pagers. In which case they just used standard alkaline batteries which would rule out a malware targeting the battery, and confirm it was a supply chain attack with planted explosives.

toomuchtodo2• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_pager_explosions

JSDevOps• 2 years ago

I find it hard to believe that people are seriously considering the cybersecurity angle in this situation. Yes, there may be some extremely rare and unlikely scenarios where you could hack into a device and cause the attached lithium-ion battery to overheat and combust. However, it’s important to understand that lithium-ion batteries don’t actually explode—they combust gradually over the span of a few seconds to minutes. Even if they did explode, which they don’t, we’re talking about something with the energy equivalent of a single AAA battery, not a large and powerful EV cell. Given these facts, it’s far more plausible that those pagers were intercepted and deliberately implanted with explosives, rather than being manipulated through hacking.

ilikeitdark• 2 years ago

Question: what's the possibility of doing this with non-tampered with modern mobile phones?

Many phones today have a 5000mah battery, which I'm assuming could be triggered to overheat via a malicious app or webpage. Imagine this being used on a grand scale.

talldayo13• 2 years ago

It's not easy. Lithium-ion batteries are designed to withstand heat without presenting an immediate or non-obvious threat to the user. The easiest way to cause a pyrotechnic discharge is to penetrate the battery itself, and even that isn't terribly explosive (here's a laptop battery "exploding": https://youtu.be/oieH2wwDGzo )

If someone did try heating up your phone to implement such an attack, you would feel it burning through your denim pockets long before it hits 210f. Futhermore, both phone SOCs and battery firmwares tend to implement emergency shutoff contingencies for when the phone overheats. Without prior tampering, nothing will really behave like it does in this attack. It is 100% a supply-chain threat.

moffkalast• 2 years ago

I seriously doubt there is any way at all for software to trigger a dead short, and even if you did, the path would burn out quickly and the hardware only BMS part would cut power due to the massive voltage drop.

cebu_blue• 2 years ago

OK you just have to prevent it on OS level tbab. So the battery temperature doesn't go higher than a certain level.

ridgeguy• 2 years ago

These were detonations, not batteries gone wild. A few grams of common explosives like PETN could have been dabbed to look like a small component in a pager. An exploding bridge wire (EBW) detonator can be blown by a charge pumped array of small low voltage capacitors charged in parallel, then switched to discharge in series. No booster needed.

ckemere2• 2 years ago

The expected collateral damage here seems severe even for Israel. It makes me wonder if there was a coding error where a subset of the devices were supposed to explode but they all did by mistake…

runjake• 2 years ago

I haven't seen images of the damage, but the difference in damage between an exploding lithium ion battery and 10-15 grams of RDX explosives is going to be "night and day", as they say.

Edit: OK, I've seen some videos. Looks like much less than 10-15g of RDX levels of explosions.

tmnvix2• 2 years ago

Aside from the death and injury, what concerns me about this is why now?

There is little doubt in my mind that the Prime Minister of Israel is highly motivated to engage in a wider war and drag the US along.

This mass bombing could well be in preparation for imminent further action - such as an invasion of Lebanon. Regardless, the escalation this represents is extremely concerning.

HL33tibCe73• 2 years ago

On the other hand, one could view this a show of force to try and scare Hezbollah away from further escalation

esjeon6• 2 years ago

UN Security Council Resolution 1566 outlines what is considered as terrorism:

"criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act."

If their purpose was really about scaring Hezbollah away, this attack can be labelled as terrorism. I'm pretty sure politicians have different ideas there.

nntwozz• 2 years ago

What a dystopian time to be alive.

Next thing we got Teslas driving off a cliff or AirPods exploding in peoples ears.

remram7• 2 years ago

The hunter drones are not far off. Probably with similar explosives.

saintradon2• 2 years ago

This is why Chinese made electric cars are a bad idea in America.

But Kudos to Israel for pulling off a surgical strike the likes of which we've never seen before.

ok1234562• 2 years ago

Kudos to pulling off state-sponsored terrorism that killed many innocent civilians, including doctors and nurses who relied on the same pagers?

This is like celebrating the 9/11 hijackers for the "creative hack" of using a box cutter.

tredre3• 2 years ago

This is why Chinese made electric cars are a bad idea in America.

You mean Teslas?

Aleksdev• 2 years ago

Now this is hacker news!

aussieguy12343• 2 years ago

Honestly, at this point, I see absolutely zero difference, from a moral perspective, between the Israeli government and their enemies.

Both are as bad as each other and have been implicated in many war crimes and human rights abuses, however Israel has more firepower and can inflict much more damage (E.g. demolish an entire apartment block, killing hundreds of innocent people from the air).

The last thing any country should consider doing is arming or funding either side, that will be like throwing fuel on a fire. Taking sides in what is essentially a regional ethnic conflict between extremists on both sides is not a good idea.

Again, not condoning or justifying the actions of either side or taking any sides here - they are both as bad as each other.

RickJWagner• 2 years ago

I see a clear difference. One side still holds hostages, the other does not. One side perpetrated murder, rape and kidnapping, the other did not. Etc.

aussieguy12343• 2 years ago

Rape has been committed by both sides: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/israelopt-un...

Are you seriously suggesting, in any way, that blowing up an entire apartment building and all of the innocent civilians inside is not murder?

Israel holds many innocent Palestinian civilians in its prison as its own hostages. These people are held without trial and subjected to rape and other abuses. The difference? Its a state doing it, so to alot of people this somehow makes it ok.

Again, not taking sides here, but both sides are as bad as each other.

botanical2• 2 years ago

Israel had 4000 hostages before Oct 7, and more than doubled it since to 10 000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_prisoners_in_Israe...

raxxorraxor14• 2 years ago

I do and the latest war completely reaffirmed my perspective. The little spot that allegedly tries to genocide everyone around them while their enemies have that as the stated goals in their respective charters. It is the reason for the existence of Hezbollah even. Why not believe them?

The positions aren't equal, in fact they are worlds apart and Israel treats enemy civilians better than the terror regimes they do live under despite facing constant wars of aggression by said nations.

hajile7• 2 years ago

If someone broke into your house, took over most of it and killed your family member while the police said it was perfectly fine, how would you respond? Just live and let live? Probably not.

aussieguy12343• 2 years ago

Long term solution here is a two state solution and implementing the protocols Isreal agreed to ~10 years ago. Unfortunately successive Israeli governments have completely ignored it and the current one has declared they wont be abiding by what has been agreed to.

If these things didn't happen, there could have been lasting peace by now. But I expect to see more carnage from both sides for the next 5-10 years at least, until moderate voices on both sides take over and some new agreement can be not only reached, but actually implemented.

logicziller• 2 years ago

Why were they even using pagers? Aren't all messages in cleartext?

atdt• 2 years ago

POCSAG is an ideal for broadcasting low-sensitivity push notifications, like "report to your local commanding officer by 15:00 today". These messages don't need encryption, just a reliable way to reach militants without revealing their location.

FridayoLeary8• 2 years ago

Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

why is the title so bland? It fails spectacularly at communicating the scale of the event. They went with a dog bites man headline instead.

fsckboy• 2 years ago

I'm getting tired of everybody saying "supply chain, supply chain":

first, you have no information.

second, it's so non-specific, it's less informative than "they inserted exploding batteries into the supply chain" vs "a container that was unloaded was not actually from the source" which I would say isn't even supply chain, like if I leave a box of dog poop at your door, I haven't tampered with your "supply chain"

maybe this hack started with hearing that they were going to upgrade devices. maybe it this hack started with convincing them to upgrade. maybe Turkey did it. maybe ISIS did it, they hate hezbollah.

it doesn't make you sound more informed to say "supply chain", it makes you sound less.

Maken4• 2 years ago

second, it's so non-specific, it's less informative than "they inserted exploding batteries into the supply chain" vs "a container that was unloaded was not actually from the source" which I would say isn't even supply chain, like if I leave a box of dog poop at your door, I haven't tampered with your "supply chain"

Almost all of the global commerce happens by contained carried by ship or plane. That someone can take a container full of electronics, tamper with them, and sell them without even the manufacturer noticing has very serious implications. Your phone and your laptop were also inside of a container, and were also handled by dozens of middleman companies. have you ever opened them and check every component? Can you assert you are not carrying a timed bomb in your pocket?

mcoliver• 2 years ago

"The New York Times reported that Israel hid explosive material in the Taiwan-made Gold Apollo pagers before they were imported to Lebanon, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation. The material was implanted next to the battery with a switch that could be triggered remotely to detonate."

Wild

FridayoLeary8• 2 years ago

That is pretty similar to what has been guessed so far. The posters here speculated that the charge was concealed inside the battery. Also some reports said that the batteries themselves heated up triggering the explosives. does the report mention if this was a physical switch or just some sort of control circuit?

tylerflick3• 2 years ago

The majority of plastic based high explosives are designed to be very stable, and require both heat and pressure to detonate, so my educated guess is they implanted something along the lines of a blasting cap into the pagers. I’ve seen PETN mentioned, but again, that is designed to be stable.

morkalork4• 2 years ago

They tampered with thousands of devices. Created a whole production run of them and kept it under wraps. Wild indeed.

JCharante2• 2 years ago

Did they have Mossad agents doing grunt work on the assembly line? All it takes is one spy working on the assembly line to relay how the malicious pagers look like to make the operation a waste.

vharuck• 2 years ago

citing American and other officials briefed on the operation.

How far should I be reading into the fact that people outside of Israel leaked this info so quickly? Does it mean the US was very unhappy with the attack? I doubt they were happy with not being given a heads up.

CSMastermind• 2 years ago

It probably just means that they weren't given any advanced warning and don't want any blame for it.

Cyberdog2• 2 years ago

The capacity to keep secrets, even at the state level, takes a level of mental maturity that few are capable of. So many are thrilled by the idea of knowing something few other people know to a degree that they paradoxically want to make it something everybody knows. Journalists take advantage of this and collect and share leaky sources amongst each other. The reason for the leaking is most likely just human nature.

That said, the existence of the state of Israel is such a contentious topic that the leakers may have been motivated by politics as well as the above, sure. But I doubt state-level agencies are condoning the leaking here.

cryptonector6• 2 years ago

Could be damage control. There were rumors that it was the lithium ion batteries being made to explode. If those rumors were widely believed true, that would damage iPhone and Android and other brands.

divbzero• 2 years ago

Apparently they were branded Gold Apollo but not made by Gold Apollo:

Gold Apollo said on Wednesday the pagers that were used in the detonations in Lebanon on Tuesday were not made by it but by a company called BAC which has a licence to use its brand.

…

The company said in a statement that the AR-924 model was produced and sold by BAC.

"We only provide brand trademark authorization and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product," the statement said.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gold-apollo-says-i...

deeth_starr_v• 2 years ago

“Gold Apollo said on Wednesday the pagers that were used in the detonations in Lebanon on Tuesday were not made by it but by a company called BAC which has a licence to use its brand.”

They spun up a whole company

iszomer• 2 years ago

Not surprising. Recall how two Taiwanese companies were implicated when they reportedly had their device driver signing key "stolen", in the creation of Stuxnet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet#Windows_infection [2] https://youtu.be/Fqk_VUMzY_M?si=H64JCMMCzY-k7Y1K&t=823

hettygreen• 2 years ago

Imagine what they could do with the battery in an electric car..

thankfully the security on vehicles is so good that a hack like this would be impossible eh?

talldayo13• 2 years ago

It's very easy to imagine what they'd do with the battery in an electric car. They would do the same thing they did to the pager: put a bomb in it. You cannot "detonate" a lithium ion battery with remote code execution unless you have tampered with the components surrounding it.

It's not so much about the security on vehicles and more about the practical limits. Thermal runaway is only going to happen if you manage to disable the battery's shutoff safeguard (which is usually replicated in hardware and firmware). Unlike phones, you can't really heat up the CPU and force the battery to take the heat. You would have to manipulate the drivetrain in a way that unnaturally damaged the hardware, something a driver would notice almost immediately.

Getting the conditions right for a software-based exploit is a circus act compared to installing a plastic explosive and remote detonator outside the battery stowage.

01acheru• 2 years ago

Threat model: The Mossad doing Mossad things with your [change "email address" with "anything"]

Solution:

- Magical amulets?

- Fake your own death, move into a submarine?

- YOU'RE STILL GONNA BE MOSSAD'ED UPON

I think that's it.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/08/mickens_on_se...

Full read here https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf

phirgate2• 2 years ago

This is terrorism. Israel is not an island defending from terrorist, they are the ones spreading terror. What they did to their neighbouring countries could be happen to others. Can we stop praising this as clever and impressive attack and start holding Israel accountable!?

djohnston3• 2 years ago

Their neighbouring country whose southern region is run by a designated terrorist organisation? The same org that has been indiscriminately launching rockets at civilians towns for a year straight? Oh yeah Israel is definitely the terrorist you’re right XD

hajile7• 2 years ago

Former Israeli officials have openly acknowledged Israel's role in providing funding and assistance to Hamas as a means of undermining secular Palestinian factions such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who served as the Israeli military governor in Gaza during the early 1980s, admitted to providing financial assistance to Mujama Al-Islamiya, the precursor of Hamas, on the instruction of the Israeli authorities.
in 1998, it was revealed that Netanyahu suggested Turkey to support Hamas. Netanyahu said "Hamas also has bank accounts for aid in banks, we help them too, you [Turkey] can help too."
In an interview with Politico in 2023, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that "In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas." He continued saying "Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza."

Israel is surprised that the terrorists they funded do terrorist things?

The obvious conclusion is that they WANTED Hamas to do those terrorist things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas

YZF• 2 years ago

It's the very opposite.

It's the most precise targeting of enemy combatants ever. Hezbollah (and effectively Lebanon) started a war on Israel on Oct 8th in solidarity with Hamas' attacks on Israel (before Israel has even responded really) and has continued indiscriminate attacks against Israeli civilians since resulting in more than 100,000 internally displaced people in Israel. Many dead and injured. Most recently children in a soccer match.

Israel has repeatedly demanded Hezbollah stop attacking it and warned it of grave consequences. This is consequences.

The only "neighbouring countries" of other countries that have something to worry about are those that start wars against their neighbours.

loeg4• 2 years ago

Hezbollah is at war with Israel. The targets are combatants, not civilians.

esjeon6• 2 years ago

I hope people discuss using more precise terms. UN Security Council Resolution 1566 outlines what is generally considered as terrorism:

Physically the attack was likely well targeted. It was shipped very recently, so it's likely only few of those beepers made into the public market.

However, the attack happened right in the middle of general population far away from the theater of war. This obviously intimidates and mentally damages innocent people living their normal lives. So it can be considered as a form of terrorism.

No government, especially those of developed countries, should be allowed to inflict harms on individuals, living in peace, in any form, whether physical or mental.

TiredOfLife4• 2 years ago

No government, especially those of developed countries, should be allowed to inflict harms on individuals, living in peace, in any form, whether physical or mental.

That's why they targeted members of Hezbollah (a terrorist organization) and not children playing football like Hezbollah does.

malkia• 2 years ago

This blowing while you are fueling up your car.... hmmm

nova22033• 2 years ago

This is like Anom but with explosives

softgrow• 2 years ago

I'm a long way from Lebanon, but carry two pagers for Emergency Services (one per service). One used to be an Apollo Gold but now it isn't. From what I've read these were modified pagers, but I still rang one manager for reassurance. We need a strong statement for all the emergency responders and medical staff that still use these things that it's not going to happen to you.

calf4• 2 years ago

Israel drone struck Jose Andres' food truck program this year.

Between these acts of war between stupid, angry countries, there needs to be not just guarantees for aid workers, but broad international condemnation of tactics that violate the Geneva Convention and related principles. And those principles are long overdue for high-tech drone strikes, robotics and electronics warfare.

senectus12• 2 years ago

How did they know who was using the modified pagers?

How did they know they were only Hezbollah people?

Are there inocent people walking around with modifed explosive devices strapped to their waists? To their kids waists?

This seems potentially extremely reckless.

ironfootnz• 2 years ago

New fear unlocked!!! I will no longer look at my phone the same way!

sudohalt• 2 years ago

This is a great article going over why the settler colonial apartheid genocidal state of Israel engages in such operations:

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09...

shartshooter• 2 years ago

Would the explosives in these pagers have been caught by something like TSA? I could imagine that at please *some* of the owners had to have flown with them.

Were they caught? If not, why not?

creato• 2 years ago

Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by most countries that also have airport security. I really doubt the people with these pagers would go anywhere near a TSA checkpoint.

vincentpants3• 2 years ago

Weren't these people mostly emergency responders? Like doctors and EMTs? And yes, killed several, but also injured thousands? I'm a little concerned by the vocabulary used in the op title.

charbroiled7• 2 years ago

Hezbollah started encouraging its operatives to switch to pagers months ago, out of fear that Israel would compromise or had compromised their cell phones.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pagers-drones-how-...

It seems likely that a significant number of the thousands injured were Hezbollah militants. How significant? We’ll have to wait for the numbers.

I haven’t seen any indication that the exploding pagers were held by emergency responders in a significant quantity. Do you have a source for that?

vincentpants3• 2 years ago

A lot of what I have been following is from here[1] and mentions: - "Today's attacks exposed many members at various levels. While the group says many of those injured are medical staff or administrative personnel and not fighters..." as well as - "Then we started seeing CCTV from inside shops and supermarkets of these small explosions targeting people doing their groceries or paying at the checkout.

Then for hours on end [we heard] the wail of sirens. The internal security forces were asking people to get off the streets because traffic was overwhelming the city."

And from my understanding of that region's geopolitics, isn't Hezbollah a political party? So this is like reading about a nation state blanket bombing targets that are of members of the Republican party right?

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cwyl9048gx8t

js4ever• 2 years ago

Yeah if course it was all journalists kids pregnant doctors. Not Hezbollah members carrying Hezbollah pagers /s

torginus3• 2 years ago

Honestly just slept on the thing and the story seems even more surreal to me now.

How come they needed to replace their pagers AT ONCE recently? Has there been some great breakthrough in pager technology? I have a 5 year old phone and no desire to replace it for at least a couple years more.

How come everyone had the EXACT same model? Even if the Israelis didn't compromise it, even the most incompetent intelligence agency would notice somebody ordering thousands of an item with an usual order count of zero.

Anyone with a very basic knowledge of supply chain attacks knows you don't buy just one kind of item. If they bought fifty different kinds of pagers, this attack would've been impossible.

I'm sure even in benign cases, placing an order of thousands of items on some niche product causes a lead time of months/weeks. Never mind that the Israelis had to painstakingly modify every single one under the cloak of secrecy. Didn't that raise any flags?

And after they did order thousands of the same item, they didn't bother opening up even a single one?

Honestly I don't think incompetence could explain this, I'm 99% sure Hezbollah is compromised at a high level.

gamer191• 2 years ago

How come they needed to replace their pagers AT ONCE recently?

Hezbollah recently switched to using only pagers for communication, because they were worried about Israel hacking their phones. It's likely they all bought pagers at the same time because of that, because I doubt any of them would have owned pagers already

timcambrant• 2 years ago

I agree with all of your questions. But covert organizations fall victims for this type of vulnerability all the time. Operation Trojan Shield and the ANOM network is one example. Operation Firewall and the ShadowCrew takedown was another. I believe LulzSec was taken down by bad opsec in the internal IRC channel as well. Bin Laden wasn't able to mix up his use of couriers and locations enough to stay hidden forever. It's easy for us to see the mistakes and point out that the criminals should have been more diligent or mixed up their operations more, but that would take more effort than anyone can consistently give over time.

Operational security is really hard and requires constant dedication which most organizations can't keep up over time. Eventually the most professional organizations will slip up and make some of the mistakes you point out above. It's very likely that someone has spies or informants inside organizations such as Hizbollah and Hamas. But this can also have been a lapse in standard operations that was finally detected and exploited by Mossad after actively watching for a long time.

achow• 2 years ago

Israel's Mossad spy agency planted a small amount (3 gm) of explosives inside 5,000 pagers made by Gold Apollo (a Taiwanese company). "The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code." 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them.

Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taipei-based firm's brand, "The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it"

Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking,

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/3-grams-of-explosives-per-pa...

dotancohen7• 2 years ago

Thank you. Where do you have this information from?

figassis2• 2 years ago

Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-exp...

b1125• 2 years ago

You know, as this is a tech forum, I'll reply via a tech business, re: branding angle.

Yes Gold Apollo, they were yours. That's because you licensed your name, and your name is your business.

(EG your mark(name) of trade)

I've seen this in everything from hotels to frying pans. License that name! We made 1% more this quarter. Yeehaw!

Holiday in has corporate owned hotels, franchised hotels, and of course licensed hotels. Franchised ones have more control from corporate, licensed far less. And it shows.

Same as t-fal, which in Canada is just the cheapest junk you can get, with Canadian Tire owning and manufacturing under the name:

https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/t-fal-viva-aluminum-fryin...

Anyone buyong t-fal pans there will think t-fal is the cheapest junk ever. Because it is.

This worked well pre-Internet, but now people see reviews for Canadian Tire t-fal when researching pans in Europe. Way to trash your local name.

Licensing your name doesn't work the same in 2024 as 1994. Don't do it.

Y_Y3• 2 years ago

TIL Canadians call Tefal t-fal

ericjmorey• 2 years ago

More concisely, why should anyone who, due to these explosions, does not trust devices branded as Gold Apollo care about a distinction between a product using a licensed trademark vs a product that has been contracted out for production of products using the brand name they own?

xattt2• 2 years ago

It’s okay. CTC bought Paderno, a Prince Edward Island perennial, to juice out more brand value after they’re done sucking T-Fal dry.

I don’t think they’ve started including explosives in their product yet.

rafale• 2 years ago

It's unreasonable to expect a small companies to have rogue nation states in their threat model. Apple, Microsoft, ... yeah but not a smaller business.

light_hue_12• 2 years ago

Oh wow!

I never understood why I felt that t-fal was garbage in Canada but mediocre in the US. Now it makes sense: they're totally different products.

cryptonector6• 2 years ago

It's difficult enough to secure the supply chain towards the OEM as it is. It's nigh impossible for a vendor/OEM to secure the supply chain towards retail and distribution, not relative to nation-state attackers of great sophistication and with huge budgets. This sort of thing could happen with any smartphone, any feature phone, laptops, etc. Though it was a lot easier to mount this attack given an order for thousands of units from one company.

repelsteeltje3• 2 years ago

Gold Apollo claims the devices were assembled in Hungary by a company named BAC.

vincnetas• 2 years ago

Very appropriate name for such outcome. BUM or BOM would be better but it is what it is.

stef252• 2 years ago

My guess that entire company was just a Mossad front.

* They seem to have little or no actual presence at their Hungarian address * CEO has a profile that seems to have very little to do with the manufacturing of telecom devices * Gold owner says their payments were strange and came through the middle east. * Orban is very pro Israel

SenorKimchi4• 2 years ago

planted a small amount (3 gm)

The abbreviation for gram is simply "g". I was a bit confused but at least the link cleared things up.

vocram• 2 years ago

g is the correct SI unit symbol, not only an abbreviation

Rinzler89• 2 years ago

Americans will do anything to avoid using the SI metric system :)

4gotunameagain2• 2 years ago

Where is the line between war and terrorism ?

This attack is quite indiscriminate. There are already videos circulating of random people being collateral damage.

Israel is losing the support of people more and more, and all that due to the crusade of Netanyahu to stay in power and to not be imprisoned for his former crimes.

Despicable. So much human suffering and for what ?

H8crilA2• 2 years ago

Dropping kilotons of aviation bombs on a populated city is indiscriminate. This is nothing in comparison to that. Frankly I would even call this surgical.

yes52721• 2 years ago

Exactly this. It's interesting how I haven't been able to find any single media portraying this as a possible act of terror while they have been quite critical of conduct in Gaza. I hope this changes as there really needs to be a reckoning with the idea of bombs randomly triggered anywhere, maybe hospitals, schools, theaters.

soferio• 2 years ago

This military response was the opposite of indiscriminate. It was proportionate and targeted. It focussed as best as anyone ever could on the precise set of people who (hiding among their own civilians) have been launching hundreds of inaccurate rockets to kill Israeli civilians - for months.

lm2846915• 2 years ago

It's so weird that this super mild take is downvoted on HN... I got the same yesterday.

Everything has to be binary, good vs evil, once you pick your side you have to ignore everything that compromises your idyllic vision.

SenorKimchi4• 2 years ago

Where is the line between war and terrorism ?

Easy. When it is you or your allies committing an act, it is war and collateral damage. When it is someone else, it is terrorism.

It is often a difficult topic to discuss because both sides tend to be in the wrong. It ends up being asymmetrical warfare. The stronger side accuses the weaker of hiding behind civilians while the weaker side accuses the stronger of human rights violations.

As sad as this case is, I find it pretty interesting since it is clearly an extrajudicial act of violence carried out in a foreign land. The west will likely celebrate this, but I personally find this much worse than the Indian assassination that took place in Canada "recently" and didn't have significant collateral damage, yet the west was up in arms about.

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

Israel has clearly steeped into terrorism and beyond before day 3 of this war.

cbeach• 2 years ago

Indiscriminate?

I'd say the pager bombing was as /surgical/ as one could possibly be.

A very sophisticated and targeted attack, putting tiny amounts of explosives in devices used by terrorist-linked individuals (ONLY Hezbollah were using the pagers because of their paranoia about Israeli monitoring of cellphones).

An example of an /indiscriminate/ attack is Hezbollah's firing of unguided rockets into Israel's civilian areas. In July, for example, a Hezbollah rocket killed 12 children playing football in the Golan Heights. THAT is indiscriminate killing.

pvaldes18• 2 years ago

I wouldn't wish to be in the PR damage control team of Gold Apollo right now.

This was a direct attack to their survival as company. Will they sue Israeli government for turning their product into a bomb used to mutilate and kill people? Seems not probable.

Will they sue the Hungarian company making the bombs? That would be a more realistic target. Now Hezbollah has an excuse to attack Hungary interests in the EU and the conflict could escalate. That company should be crushed and closed for good by the Hungarian law system IMO. Either you are a military grade company or you aren't.

If Gold Apollo wants to keep selling pagers, better they start making all the carcasses on their products transparent from now on. With a big photo in the boxes showing how the correct product must look.

oytis5• 2 years ago

That company should be crushed and closed for good by the Hungarian law system IMO. Either you are a military grade company or you aren't.

Were the pagers military grade? Hungarian company providing military equipment to Hezbollah would be a scandal on its own.

_ugfj2• 2 years ago

As it can be expected the situation is extremely murky. Hungarian press is abuzz with this, I will translate a few hard facts and leave speculation to others. I will also use English sources as appropriate. Hungarian sources are below the list, you can run them through automated translation to fact check me.

* There's a small consulting company called BAC after the initials of the founder Bársony-Arcidiacono Cristiana. One of their services is https://archive.fo/kwTKA "We develop international technology cooperation among countries for the sale of telecommunication products. This cooperation entails scaling up a business from Asia to new markets e.g. developing countries". Their home page https://archive.fo/dXtMx lists these: Strategic Advisor for major International Organizations including Financial companies (Venture Capitals, IAEA, UNESCO, CNRS, EC, etc.). Business Developer and Savvy Analyst for Innovative/ Solutions in diverse fields (Sustainable Development (SDGs), Water, Energy, Resilience-Mitigation-Adaptation, Capacity Building, Complex Emergencies, Digitalization (AI, Blockchain, ICT) within Humanistic Economy.

* The official place of business is just a business "placeholder". The woman who answered the doorbell for journalists said no one ever from BAC is there, maybe once a month a mail comes which she receives.

* This house is also the registered address for a number of companies. Two companies have Russian owners. One of them is an oil wholesaler.

* BAC revenue in 2023 was 210 million forints and 13 million profit. What's remarkable is how person-related expenses (payroll etc) was a mere 0.5 million forints for the entire year. Hungarian monthly minimum wage was a bit over 0.25M HUF. One million HUF is about 2820 USD.

* NBC talked to the founder. According to her "I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong". https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/taiwan-firm-denies-making...

* The founder's linkedin is still up https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristiana-b%C3%A0rsony-arcidiaco... Her PhD from 2006 is at https://ucl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?do... so it seems real.

https://hvg.hu/kkv/20240918_hezbollah-bac-consulting

https://archive.is/QWlXw

https://telex.hu/belfold/2024/09/18/mit-lehet-tudni-a-magyar...

In conclusion, if I needed to speculate based on the LinkedIn page and the archived consulting page, what gives me pause: if this woman indeed exists she is one of the most talented people in all of Hungary. Seven languages, degrees in diverse fields and a PhD in physics. At the same time, I have indeed found a PhD from 2006 and her grants and scholarships from even earlier are probably not hard to verify either. I do not know what to think.

FridayoLeary8• 2 years ago

I doubt the company exists anymore or that there's anyone left in hungary who can be held responsible. Here's what i imagine took place:

step one: mossad sets up some sham manufacturing facility in Hungary or buys an existing one.

Step 2: reach out to gold apollo and make a deal to produce their pagers under license. Money no object they probably offered them very good terms. Gold apollo is so pleased by the money being offered they fail to investigate the company properly. Step 3: mossad agents start production introducing lethal batteries into the design, produce several thousand units then vanish leaving apollo executives bewildered but they have the money already so they don't ask too many questions.

Step 4: sell all the pagers at a great price to some hezbolla arms dealer, go home, buy some popcorn and turn on the tv.

In short everyone involved have probably disappeared months ago.

Also a really clever part is that they could have turned a profit on the sale meaning the operation was at least partly subsidised by hezbolla themselves.

AtlasBarfed2• 2 years ago

Hezbollah and Hamas need the inherent anti Israel bias of Europe. It's the only international group with money and influence that sides with them. If they attack anything in Israel then it is a massive Israeli win.

Europe only care for geopolitical games in the Mediterranean and petroleum. The Gaza conflict has shown that oil is on its way out as a top level geopolitical influence.

Lol military grade. This is a guerilla fighting group getting leftover oil money from Iran. They were using pagers.

Israel has been fighting for 100 years with its hands tied. With the unofficial and largely official sunni/saudi Israel alliance, only Iran cares about the freedom fighters of Gaza and Lebanon, and you can put a ten year clock on that funding once EVs start taking real chunks of transport

adityaathalyo• 2 years ago

This was a direct attack to their survival as company. Will they sue Israeli government for turning their product into a bomb used to mutilate and kill people? Seems not probable.

Would Toyota or any other car manufacturer sue Arabs et al. for turning their pickups into rolling suicide bombs?

onemoresoop• 2 years ago

If Gold Apollo wants to keep selling pagers, better they start making all the carcasses on their products transparent from now on. With a big photo in the boxes showing how the correct product must look.

I don't think that would make a difference at all, explosives could be disguised in any electronic components, being transparent wouldn't help very much. The Taiwanese company's brand is now irreparably tarnished, I think that is the cost of lending the brand name to an untrustworthy partner.

refurb• 2 years ago

Can a company sue you because you modified their product? Even if that modification caused harm?

niutech• 2 years ago

"The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it"

That's whitewashing. If they license the brand, they should control every aspect of manufacturing. Otherwise they are irresponsible. If I was their client, I wouldn't trust them any longer and return all pagers.

I am curious about the technical details - where were the explosives packed, how were they connected and triggered? Did any pager survive and didn't blow up?

llmfan• 2 years ago

You can judge them to be not a generally super-trustworthy brand.

But I would grant them that their responsibility for the deaths of these people is limited.

lucianbr6• 2 years ago

These declarations sound so stupid to me. What's the point of having your brand on a product, if you're going to claim you have nothing to do with it? What is the point of the concept of a brand even?

shmatt5• 2 years ago

Unfortunately I’ve been trying to tell this to friends and family for almost a decade in regards to clothing and home goods.

People are stuck in the 80s and 90s that a logo defines how something was made, which isn’t true at all these days. Calvin Klein is a great example where most of their income comes from licensing, not selling their own clothes. They might review designs but have no say on if the resulting garment can be sold with their logo. As long as they get get the licensing fee. Unfortunately I know people who will spend more on their items than the same garment made by the same manufacturer but with a different license on jt

Same for Toshiba TVs and many others

green-eclipse• 2 years ago

What is this news source NDTV? I've never heard of it. Are they reputable?

lawlessone4• 2 years ago

Indian network, a bit tabloidy but i think they are mostly ok.

limit499karma2• 2 years ago

Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taipei-based firm's brand, "The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it"

He also said it was strange he got paid from "Middle East". That statement of his also indicates this was not a long standing "licensing" agreement. Someone likely called up from "Europe" and asked for the license for that specific device.

Conclusion: the company in Europe is a paper fiction. The devices were made in "Israel" and the only time they may have been in Europe was to get them from Middle East to so a "European" company can ship them back.

This also means Hezbollah has an asset in its upper ranks. We can assume this since they announced before "We're gonna use pagers from now on folks" and thus prior to this Shin Bet had no reason to run a cutout in "Europe" making pagers. The entire production chain was then a fiction setup likely recently, certainly post "headsup everyone, pagers" announcement by the targeted organization.

So the chain of events is clear:

- "Did all you hear we are going to use pagers?"

- Shin Bet sets up the phony production Taiwan -> EU.

- Devices made in "Israel".

- Asset recommends make / model / seller.

- boom.

MichaelZuo• 2 years ago

I think from now on future OEMs will be very careful indicating whether a product was in fact made by them, under their supervision, or was license made by some third party.

71bw• 2 years ago

Why are you referring to Israel with its name in quotation marks?

delichon2• 2 years ago

If such a supply chain attack was in progress on a larger scale against the US, do we have mechanisms in place to detect it? Would shipments of these same devices pass through US customs?

tobyhinloopen• 2 years ago

A technically amazing but otherwise terrifying act.

wiz21c• 2 years ago

How do you intercept so many beepers ?

- you have to know they have been ordered

- you have to know when they are sent (from Europe)

- you have to intercept them (in which country ?)

- to modify them

- to put them back in the delivery (so you have ties with the shipping company)

- without nobody noticing

So Israel was likely not alone, or they have agents in many places...

dncornholio• 2 years ago

I don't think they intercepted. Think they just bought the pagers, prepared them and sold them directly to Hezbollah in one big batch.

whoitwas3• 2 years ago

This is really sick and should result in major sanctions against Israel. USA should never give them another penny, take the nukes, and let them wither. They've become pure hate. This is a standard that can't be allowed and Israel must be punished.

kombine3• 2 years ago

If it was not a terrorist attack and a war crime but a targeted operation against the militants, why wouldn't Israel claim responsibility for the successful operation?

olalonde9• 2 years ago

What incentive would they have for doing so?

sim7c002• 2 years ago

countries i think don't comit acts of war randomly without annoucement or claim. This in itself would be borderline criminal, though i'm not sure if it's an actual thing noted in the geneva conventions. Those do state that any act of war should give an opportunity for retaliation. So in essence this is just as criminal as bombing people using armed drones, because these fighters did not have any opportunity to strike back.

charbroiled7• 2 years ago

Israel has had a “no comment” policy for many years. Why? I can think of a few reasons. One is that some operations, if acknowledged by Israel, would trigger a proportionate response by the target, but if not acknowledged would allow the target to save face by downplaying what happened, if neither side actually wants war.

That probably doesn’t apply to this case, but has occurred in the past. And no-comment policies are more effective when applied unconditionally.

raxxorraxor14• 2 years ago

It seems to be just some sensible policy, but maybe also to let frivolous accusations, such as yours, hanging for bit.

hajile7• 2 years ago

If a car bomb went off next to an IDF post killing a bunch of IDF soldiers and one 10-year-old kid, it would be declared a terrorist attack immediately.

If this involved China and Taiwan, North and South Korea, or Russia planting bombs on Ukrainian soldiers, nobody would be debating whether it was a terrorist attack.

ttyprintk2• 2 years ago

It’s certainly a relief when polite society can recognize it that way. So, that ends one discussion but starts another. When foreign intelligence is tasked with, say, breaking laws and moral codes in Lebanon; it lives in the shade because we cannot distinguish it from terrorism or organized crime or a financial scam. It’s been this way for a long time and the debate nowadays is whether or not, on balance, we’re prevailing over evil.

ryaneager• 2 years ago

Because it was a terrorist attack and a war crime.

GrumpyNl• 2 years ago

How long will it take to make a movie about this?

pvaldes18• 2 years ago

Hmm. I have a couple of politic fiction questions. Lets would imagine that somebody takes a flight with a pager or a second-hand bought phone.

1) How could be sure that there is not a small amount of explosive hidden in their devices or batteries?.

Most devices are sealed. Would the phone smell like something in particular? Would be detected by dogs or x-rays? (I assume that a tiny amount of explosive can be put inside a battery or anything, enough to start a chain reaction with the whole battery while remains hidden to x-rays).

2) What would be the legal path on the defense of this person? just "I didn't knew" does not seem very convincing in a trial. If somebody manipulates a phone are the data stored somewhere?

negativeonehalf2• 2 years ago

It's surprising that Mossad arranged a massive destruction of communication technology without it being the precursor to a major military operation. Very curious why they chose this moment to execute an operation they clearly had ready to go for months.

alecco2• 2 years ago

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-18/ty-article-li...

"use it or lose it" moment, allegedly.

figassis2• 2 years ago

Gold Apollo, the company whose brand was on the devices says they did not manufacture them, they only licensed their brand to BAC, a Hungarian company. Well, I'm sure income from licensing fees in their accounting books say differently. You profit from it, you should pay for it. Any other way to see this will allow this type of vulnerability to spread and the buck will stop nowhere.

hajile7• 2 years ago

Why would devices made in Hungary be labelled "made in Taiwan"?

surfingdino• 2 years ago

The market for 3d X-Ray scanners and population surveillance is about to explode.

pilooch• 2 years ago

They could have seen it while fixing a pager... Or those things work so well, never break...

gadders• 2 years ago

There must be a bit of tradecraft involved.

How did Mossad ensure these particular pagers were bought? Who was the salesperson that (presumably) gave Hezbollah a good deal on them?

9cb14c1ec02• 2 years ago

What's the probability that the pagers were also bugged to allow Mossad to listen in? Pretty high, I would guess.

hhh3• 2 years ago

The pagers were for a POCSAG network, they don't have to bug the pagers to listen in.

9cb14c1ec02• 2 years ago

I was thinking more of the underlying encryption being compromised.

krembo• 2 years ago

If one thing taught from this James Bond movie act, is that you should never say never.

Bluestein2• 2 years ago

Many questions remain, but, also, one: If Mossad had the capability to pull off such a complex supply chain fiesta here, could they not as certainly hack the firmware to intercept all traffic? (Now that Hezbollah is alledged to be using them to communicate?)

Maybe they did, and - at this point - decided that detonating them was preferable to having the asset - and whatever information it was yielding ...

... which is worrying.-

PS. There's talk of this being a "use it or lose it" kind of scenario, with the pagers being close to compromised.-

FollowingTheDao• 2 years ago

If that is not terrorism I do not know what is...

JCharante2• 2 years ago

wow, if anyone suggested this supply chain attack as a possibility then everyone would brush it off

ada19812• 2 years ago

This must clearly be a violation of international law.

Wild that the US media is reporting this as some mysterious, awe inspiring tactic.

Havoc2• 2 years ago

That’s a lot of injured and very angry very freshly motivated terrorists…and not a lot of dead ones.

Not convinced this is a net win for Israel

bbqfog5• 2 years ago

It's also going to be devastating to the Israeli economy. Who would possibly use Israeli tech now?

trallnag• 2 years ago

Israel loses if it kills it's enemies. That's your logic? Reminds me of Trudeau "if you kill your enemies, they win".

Havoc2• 2 years ago

Israel loses if it kills it's enemies. That's your logic?

huh? No not at all

Saying that those 2k+ injured Hammas are going to spend time recovering and when they're back they're going to be even more motivated to harm Israel.

Would have been better to do nothing. Or to kill them. But nothing in between.

botanical2• 2 years ago

Apartheid Israel really are terrorists. This was representative of that, killing 2 children in the process. There could be 186,000 deaths since October in their current Genocide of the Palestinians. No wonder Hamas and Hezbollah exist, the same way uMkhonto we Sizwe existed in Apartheid South Africa. They need to be sanctioned and their leaders put in a court of the ICC.

anovikov• 2 years ago

Fantastically executed. One-off trick, but what a brilliant one.

treebeard901• 2 years ago

It is reasonable to assume a Mossad agent would have pagers as potential way to communicate. Pagers work on separate networks from cell phones and usually do not have the same location tracking.

It is also fair to assume that Mossad would want the ability to remotely destroy an agents pager. If it was captured, etc. So very likely these were already a standard part of their equipment and then distributed to Lebanon.

It is also interesting how fear of cell phone tracking drove them to pagers, which was then exploited in response.

It is different from Stuxnet and a form of terrorism. Same as all the assassinations. They are crossing all of these lines that can be a double edged sword in the long run.

cykros• 2 years ago

Gotta love the passive voice they keep using. Can't be bothered to say that the pagers didn't just blow up themselves, but were actively armed and detonated in a large scale international terrorist attack by a regime actively engaged in a genocide whose leadership is wanted by both major international courts. Way to go Reuters, meeting expectations exactly.

Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

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