Pagers Explode Across Lebanon in Apparent Attack on Hezbollah

uncmba

uncmba

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From the NY TImes:

Hezbollah said wireless devices belonging to its members had exploded, and the health minister said more than 2,700 people had been injured. Hezbollah blamed Israel, but the Israeli military declined to comment.
Hundreds of pagers blew up at the same time across Lebanon on Tuesday in an apparently coordinated attack that killed eight people and injured more than 2,700, health officials said on Tuesday.

The attack came a day after Israeli leaders had warned that they were considering stepping up their military campaign against Hezbollah.

Hezbollah said that pagers belonging to its members had exploded and accused Israel of being behind the attack. The Israeli military declined to comment.

The wave of explosions left many people in Beirut in a state of confusion and shock. Witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from people’s pockets, followed by a small blasts that sounded like fireworks or gunshots. Amateur footage broadcast on Lebanese television showed chaotic scenes at hospitals, as wounded patients with mangled hands and burn injuries sought treatment. Sirens blared throughout the city as the day ended.

Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said that at least eight people had been killed and more than 2,700 others injured, including 200 who were in critical condition. Dr. Abiad said many of the victims had injuries to their faces, particularly the eyes, as well as to their hands and stomachs. One of those killed was an 8-year-old girl, he said.

www.nytimes.com

Pagers Explode Across Lebanon in Attack on Hezbollah: Israel-Gaza War Live Updates

Hezbollah said wireless devices belonging to its members had exploded, and the health minister said more than 2,700 people had been injured. Hezbollah blamed Israel, but the Israeli military declined to comment.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
From the article:

Three officials briefed on the attack said that it had targeted hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah operatives who have used such devices for years to make it harder for their messages to be intercepted. The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
 
From the Times:

Hezbollah has been security conscious about telecommunications for years, Mr. Al Sabaileh said, and has long banned its operatives from using cellphones while they are traveling in the south of the country near the Israel border. Cellphones can be used to locate a the person carrying them.

But, he said, that became more urgent after Oct. 7, when some of the Hezbollah’s senior members were assassinated in airstrikes. In February, Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, warned members during a speech that their phones were dangerous and could be spied on by Israeli forces, saying they should break or bury them.

Iran, whose government has for decades supplied Hezbollah with arms, technology and other forms of military aid, and would have been pivotal both to any decision to switch to the system and in the delivery of the technology, the experts said.

Experts said that they did not know the precise arrangement for the distribution of the paging devices to Hezbollah members, nor how they had been compromised, but a key element of the new paging system was that it did not use the network of satellites that are the basis of most conventional cellphone networks, and therefore were harder to track electronically.

David Wood, a senior Lebanon analyst with the International Crisis Group think tank, described it as a “limited, closed network.”

He said that in the short term, Hezbollah would likely resort to other methods of communication, potentially one that avoided electronic means altogether.

“It will obviously make coordination more difficult and more risky and without a doubt this is a serious blow to Hezbollah’s operational capacity,” he said.
 
This is pretty scary if they were able to somehow hack the pagers and make them explode remotely. Can you imagine if terrorists or China, North Korea, and Russia find a way to hack cellphones to do the same thing?
 
CarolinaFever said:
This is pretty scary if they were able to somehow hack the pagers and make them explode remotely. Can you imagine if terrorists or China, North Korea, and Russia find a way to hack cellphones to do the same thing?
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It seems to me this has to be a hardware/supply chain hack rather than some sort of software hack (???)
 
1. Anyone ever see the movie Traitor with Don Cheadle? If you have, you'll immediately see the reference. If you have not, go watch it. Now. I don't care if you're at work. Leave, find a screen, and watch Traitor. Not that I'm building it up or anything, LOL. No, seriously, it is a great, great film and Don Cheadle is super-excellent.

2. More to the point, remember how Israel/US were able to sneak flash drives into the Iranian nuclear centrifuges and caused many, many of them to break? This seems like sorta the same thing, yes? Israel and/or the US must have some really good plants/double agents inside Iran.
 
nycfan said:
It seems to me this has to be a hardware/supply chain hack rather than some sort of software hack (???)
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Yes. I can't see how this could happen with software.

Scratch that. I can see it. A software hack could cause the pager to get cancer, so to speak -- i.e to send messages on a non-stop loop until it overheats and the battery explodes
 
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nycfan said:
It seems to me this has to be a hardware/supply chain hack rather than some sort of software hack (???)
Click to expand...
Yeah, I cannot imagine there is a way to make a stock pager (or cell phone) explode like that. Clearly the Israelis got their hands on the pagers before distribution and added a nasty surprise.
 
CarolinaFever said:
Maybe, if they had someone on the inside that made sure the rigged pagers got to Hezbollah.
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1. They are pagers. Who are the other customers?
2. I can't imagine it's all that hard to get the rigged pagers to Hezbollah. Iran ships a big crate to wherever Hezbollah is supposed to take possession. The pagers have been hacked. Hezbollah distributes them.
3. The real trick, I would think, would be hacking pagers so they explode. They have to be outfitted with some device that would cause the battery to overheat.
4. It's also a pager. Outdated technology. It's possible Israel just found a back door and exploited it. But I'm still going with Stuxnet v 2.0
 
NYCBlueBlood said:
Yeah, I cannot imagine there is a way to make a stock pager (or cell phone) explode like that. Clearly the Israelis got their hands on the pagers before distribution and added a nasty surprise.
Click to expand...
That was my first instinct. But it's possible that they put something in some software. My guess is that the pagers have some sort of encryption bolted-on to the regular software. Get someone to insert a flash drive into a computer somewhere, take over the computer, and put a trojan horse in the encryption. This is basically how Stuxnet worked. It's a hardware hack in the sense that the system is air-gapped and so physical contact is required, but it works with a computer virus.

It's entirely possible that Israel and the CIA STILL have hooks inside Iranian agencies from Stuxnet. Or they've got other operatives in there. It's also possible that those operatives hooked up the machines to the internet to let the Israelis inside.

Also, Stuxnet was a Mossad/CIA joint. Could be the CIA was involved here as well, though the MO is more Israel. US isn't big into mass bombings.
 
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