Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
reuters.com
reuters.com
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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).
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.
it basically says: we can do whatever we want because we can. Now imagine what the other side is going to reply.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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
1. It's not supply chain attack, it's terrorist attack. 2. It's not a clever move, it's a prevocation move
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?
Permissible behavior normalized in this conflict is going to make future wars pretty ugly.
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
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!
War is over.
The long-term consequences are that we use our words instead of exothermic reactions to reach livable compromises.
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...
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.
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.
The abbreviation for gram is simply "g". I was a bit confused but at least the link cleared things up.
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.
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?
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 ?
Wild
They spun up a whole company
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...
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.
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?
There is no possibility these explosions are from battery overloads via an exploit or firmware hack.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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(); }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.
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!
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.
> some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hundreds-of-hezbollah-...
Are smartphones, for example, also vulnerable to it?
Also, we can assume that anything sent to those pagers so far has been forwarded to Israel and now that channel is burned, right?
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.
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
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...
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'
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...
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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)
Footage from the hospital
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?
But Kudos to Israel for pulling off a surgical strike the likes of which we've never seen before.
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.
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.
>>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’.
Next thing we got Teslas driving off a cliff or AirPods exploding in peoples ears.
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/
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.
As with exploding drones, this will become a thing in other countries too, either as a part of organized crime or general terrorism.
Check it out if you haven't already: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1197624/
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
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.
Edit: OK, I've seen some videos. Looks like much less than 10-15g of RDX levels of explosions.
- 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...
Overcharging batteries would be the hack....not suggesting someone do this but said strategy works with both acid based and lithium batteries...
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.
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.
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.
Were they caught? If not, why not?
How did Mossad ensure these particular pagers were bought? Who was the salesperson that (presumably) gave Hezbollah a good deal on them?
Wild that the US media is reporting this as some mysterious, awe inspiring tactic.
Maybe they hope the psychological effect is a big deterrent?
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.
Not convinced this is a net win for Israel
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.-
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.
thankfully the security on vehicles is so good that a hack like this would be impossible eh?
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09...
https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/ied/pager-bomb-rcied
It's disgusting that humans can invent such devices.
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...
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.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...
You're telling me nobody in Hezbollah watched The Wire?
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.