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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 fr
by sbeam 2y 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_random 2y agoWe 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash#Assassination
- minkles 2y agoExactly 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.
- highcountess 2y agoI’m not sure which image you are referring to but there are images of lithium battery explosions blowing holes into counters and faces. There are some linked here.
- hughesjj 2y agoNot sure a wooden desk is equivalent to porcelain though. Porcelain cracks, just need a lot of pressure in a small spot to make a big break. That said, .... Really glad I quit smoking anything after seeing the damage a vape did to those poor guys
- case 2y agoThe image is from this video: https://x.com/babaktaghvaee1/status/1836074863032701208?s=12 https://x.com/babaktaghvaee1/status/1836074863032701208?s=12
- rtaylorgarlock 2y agoExactly. 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 2y 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.
- some_random 2y agoI guess if your only exposure to spying is through spy novels you probably would feel that way? Nothing about this seems out of line to me.
- morkalork 2y agoA Russian helicopter pilot had his family escape Russia, stole a helicopter, fled to Ukraine with it and cashed out on the bounty money offered. Then he was found and assassinated in Spain by the FSB. We are living in interesting times.
- asymmetric 2y agoSource?
- morkalork 2y agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68337794 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68337794 He was offered $500,000 to do it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kspacewalk2 2y ago> Then he was found and assassinated in Spain by the FSB. And that only because he seems to have lost his sense of self-preservation and basically lived his life in the open, in a Spanish town full of Russian ex-pats. And scoffed at the idea that he'd be safer in Ukraine.
- 2y ago
- wkat4242 2y agoAhh 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.
- alwa 2y agoThough what a spectacular way to draw such a program to a close. I mean that in the sense of spectacle, of gruesome theatricality, not to glorify maiming people.
- rbanffy 2y agoFear is a powerful form of communication.
- cynicalsecurity 2y ago[flagged]
- rbanffy 2y agoIt works both ways - that's how terrorist organisations operate.
- mschuster91 2y agoMost bugs can be easily found out by any competent counterintelligence team.
- mrtksn 2y 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-explodes-factory-worker-pauls-24560766 https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/vape-explod... https://www.dailydot.com/debug/e-cig-vape-pen-explosion/ 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.
- kergonath 2y ago> It can be explosives planted, but maybe it can be batteries modified to explode instead of burn. That is not really a thing, from a technical point of view. Changing the chemistry of the battery (assuming that a suitably explosive one exists; these tend not to be developed very far) would just be swapping an explosive and not a modification. Doing something like adding some vessel to build up pressure within the battery sounds impractical (you’d need something very resistant to heat as a battery fire goes above 2000 K), at which point it’s not worth the trouble. The most likely is either some explosive besides the battery, or something that looks like a battery from the outside, but is actually half explosive on the inside to at least pass superficial inspection. This kind of damage really does not look like a battery gone wrong. It would have left all sorts of chemical residues and burned very differently.
- mrtksn 2y agoYou are probably right but explosives risk detection, either by the militants or by the airport security if taken to a flight to a country with serious security.
- jajko 2y agoGiven 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?
- minkles 2y agoA pager is passive receiver only. It never transmits. So you can't track it. That allows an operative to get to a secure line or obtain a burner device. Whoever did this just killed that as an information channel as both the devices and the network are now compromised.
- the-rc 2y agoThat's not been true for well over twenty years. http://suntelecom.com/images/st900_large.jpg http://suntelecom.com/images/st900_large.jpg
- minkles 2y agoLooks like they were using Gold AL-A25 / Apollo 929 pagers which are 100% passive.
- vel0city 2y agoYou might as well be arguing all cell phones are iPhones, because here's a model which is an iPhone. Sure, some are two-way pagers and do transmit, but most aren't. Loads of pagers are passive, receive-only devices. There's a reason why there's a common distinction between "pager" and "two-way pager".
- clydethefrog 2y agoThere 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.
- billfor 2y agoThat's going to be bad for business....
- sbassi 2y agoBusiness for pagers is not going great anyway...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PepperdineG 2y agoDennis Duffy finally got a big commercial order and now that customer isn't going to use him again. That's no way to impress Liz Lemon.
- axlee 2y agoAll the terrorist market suddenly boycotting them, I'm sure they're losing sleep over it.
- highcountess 2y agoYou are not thinking past the first point. Considering what these people have been doing lately, even if you are currently on their good side, what happens when you’re not or don’t want to serve them anymore? Think places like India and Brazil may be rethinking their supply chains right now?
- mcast 2y agoIt'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.
- moduspol 2y agoWell cell phones have been used as detonators for quite some time, right? It's not too much of a stretch.
- dghlsakjg 2y agoIts one thing to figure out how to wire the vibrator in a phone into an external explosive activation circuit. Its a whole other thing to do a supply chain intercept on an entire factory run of pagers, build a difficult to detect explosive into them, get them into the hands of your enemies, and remotely trigger them over infrastructure you don't directly control. This is an incredible level of execution. And, presumably, the IDF or some attached intelligence agency demonstrating how deeply they own their adversary's networks.
- moduspol 2y agoI'm not sure they necessarily need to deeply own their adversary's networks. I'd be impressed if Lebanese pager tech has any serious kind of encryption, for example. And we're already accepting at face value that they sabotaged the devices, so it's possible this was done with a separate RF signal than their own cellular network, even if it is locked down. But yes, the supply chain sabotaging is certainly impressive.
- svnt 2y agoYou probably need firmware and some major component modification, such as a display or battery, but not more than this, to pull it off. So at a minimum, two components, or perhaps one smart component such as a display. It seems the model was the AP-900, not the AR-924, which used alkaline (ie removable) batteries, so a new theory is an EFP (explosively formed penetrator) manufactured into the device. It appears the devices do not function on cell phone networks but instead on internal radio networks such as those used within industrial or medical settings. Best guess is the displays because: 1) there is enough room for the EFP, 2) you could modify the component to trigger itself, meaning it doesn’t need coordination between any other parts of the device 3) there are a lot of injuries to the face reported — with a display you could trip on button push without needing access to the button, when people tend to be looking right at the EFP 4) in the videos the explosions look very directional
- torginus 2y agoTIL: 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.
- cdchn 2y agoThey might not have been GSM but one way POCSAG pagers.
- torginus 2y agoThat would make sense, since there's no such thing as a one-way GSM device. GSM towers (cells) need to keep track of which devices are in their vicinity and do smooth handovers to neighboring towers. I'm not sure how the protocol you mentioned works, but I'd imagine it still needs some info about the whereabouts of the receiver to route the messages to him.
- numpad0 2y agoPagers are truly receive only. A pager is effectively a pocket FM radio fixed to one station, that vibrates when a relevant message was digitally read aloud on the radio. GSM on the other hand is cellular and bidirectional so triangulation problem applies.
- sandworm101 2y agoIf 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?
- riffraff 2y agoThere's also plenty of bystanders who are being impacted by an explosion happening in the pocket of the person next to them. I don't think whoever approved this was worried about innocent people getting hurt.
- tptacek 2y agoI watched a video of one of these exploding in the pocket of someone at a grocery store with someone standing directly next to him, so close they were rubbing shoulders, and the bystander was fine. No doubt there were many dozens of civilian casualties, but if the numbers net out the way you'd expect they would (ie: people carrying these pagers, which link to Hezbollah's own communications network --- they run their own phone company --- are overwhelmingly Hezbollah operatives) this is going to pencil out as one of the most surgical attacks of all time. Every military strike in modern warfare will involve someone in some sense not worrying about innocent people getting hurt. This isn't Agincourt. Wars happen in cities now.
- kasey_junk 2y agoThere are too many threads and this is too complicated a topic for a technology forum website so I’m not going to weigh in everywhere. But you yourself recognize that a) Hezbollah is a de facto government, not just a military or terrorist organization and that b) its folly to do some sort of algebra on casualties in these conflicts and intent is what matters. It’s hard to come up with a plausible intent for a strike that injured 2700 people, with only the weakest of targeting mechanisms across a population that ranges the gamut of occupations, other than terrorism. We would certainly view it as such if Hezbollah blew up 2700 phones of the Israeli government and military.
- loceng 2y agoAnd 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?
- iknowstuff 2y agoIm assuming you’re saying they were looking for a casus belli. They well might have, but surely the assailants knew this was a likely consequence. Why did they proceed to breach the border if they didn’t want to trigger a war?
- loceng 2y agoYou do know this so-called war didn't start on Oct. 7th, right? This world needs to be mandated to watch all of the actual evidence, and just propaganda by those who mostly control the mainstream-social media channels.
- iknowstuff 2y agoPlease elaborate
- loceng 2y agoYou can start spending time first studying these: https://israelpalestinetimeline.org/ https://israelpalestinetimeline.org/ https://ifamericansknew.org/ https://ifamericansknew.org/
- aerostable_slug 2y agoHamas coordinated strikes against Israeli c4i to hinder the IDF response to the invasion. This is trivially verifiable. Not all of Hamas are barely-educated fighters capable of little more than being pointed at innocents and told to kill.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amelius 2y agoQuestion: assuming there were explosives inside the pager, what would happen if the owner of such device would try to board an airplane?
- romseb 2y agoAfter 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 2y agoFirst thing I thought of were the exploding PCs from Die Hard 4. Back then it was such a ridiculous thing, but here we are ;)
- frabbit 2y ago[flagged]
- bluescrn 2y agoSeems much more precisely targeted than rocket attacks.
- __alexs 2y agoWe know absolutely zero about how the pagers were distributed.
- frabbit 2y ago[flagged]
- minkles 2y agoI would wait for confirmation on even those things before placing any trust on it. There is a lot of noise and misreporting at the start of a story like this because all parties involved want to set a political agenda which is convenient. The truth will never be 100% established but will be somewhere between both polarised stories.
- frabbit 2y agoI'd go further than that: the truth may be completely outside of the poles established by the stories concocted by involved parties.
- aguaviva 2y agoPrejudice, no. It is entirely reasonable to suspect that Israel is the likely culprit behind this. Everything from the attack vector to the intentional disregard for massive civilian casualties would seem to showcase its signature style, in fact.
- frabbit 2y ago
- AdmiralAsshat 2y ago[flagged]
- tdeck 2y ago[flagged]
- dredmorbius 2y agoI'm among those who often despairs that HN cannot address trenchant political issues, or aspects of stories. I really wish it could do better. That said, if you do want to discuss those issues, the best way is to do so with an extreme awareness of HN's comment guidelines and provide a highly constructive example for others to follow. Complaining about others generally doesn't have that effect. Responding to complaints of others, even constructively, is at best marginally effective as well, of course. I'll be the first to admit that the politics of the Middle East is exceedingly complex, most hats are at best grey, and I find myself often critical, occasionally impressed and supportive of, various parties. One factor which might help is distinguishing direct beligerants and forces (regular or irregular) and political factions on the one hand from the civilian populations at large on the other (both sides face a high degree of risk, whether as collateral damage or as direct targets). I'd also strongly urge all to downvote and flag clear agitation and of course nationalistic flamewars, as dang so very often admonishes: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20nationalistic%20flameware&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.
- dredmorbius 2y agoAlso if I can make a late addition: vouch for comments which you believe may have been unfairly flagged or killed. That also happens on Highly Contentious Discussions. AFAIU mods see flags and vouches and will occasionally step in. Their bandwidth is limited however. (I've emailed dang over this moderation issue, and in the case of this specific story. The mods do what they can.)
- DrSiemer 2y agoYes, we would have referred them to the proper channels to discuss the morals and ethics of it all. Those subjects inevitably lead to bitter arguments. Keeping politics out is the only way to keep this platform sane.
- tw04 2y 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-members-wounded-lebanon-when-pagers-exploded-sources-witnesses-2024-09-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-m...
- xg15 2y agoHaaretz 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-live/returning-evacuated-residents-to-northern-israel-is-now-a-war-goal-netanyahu-office-says/00000191-fd9b-da06-ab91-fdbf31390000?liveBlogItemId=2144612493#2144612493 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-17/ty-article-li...
- tptacek 2y agoHow 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.
- xg15 2y agoYeah, agreed. Also agreeing with the sibling posters that the videos that emerge look nothing like batteries catching fire but rather like actual detonations. Nothing an untampered pager should be able to do.
- Kapura 2y agoStuxnet had a much lower body count.
- bluescrn 2y agoIf 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 2y agoLithium 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.
- bonestamp2 2y agoThat's an interesting idea, and it wouldn't even need a firmware hack... a real time clock circuit with a specific date/time to detonate would be simpler and easier to coordinate simultaneous detonation.
- andrewshadura 2y agoPagers typically ran off regular AA batteries, not Li-Ion stuff.
- dredmorbius 2y ago[flagged]
- wkat4242 2y agoCompared 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.
- jakeinspace 2y agoUnlike 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.
- wkat4242 2y agoStuxnet didn't have a lot of civilian casualties (if any?) but it did cause a lot of monetary damage to civilian companies. However this was of course unintended, the malware was never meant to make it out to the wider world.
- pesfandiar 2y agoIt's implausible that any "civilian" company was involved. Pretty much all companies involved in the Iranian infrastructure, especially covert nuclear projects, are directly or indirectly owned by IRGC.
- wkat4242 2y ago
- edm0nd 2y agoThese 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.
- sroussey 2y agoLikely, there are many many more of them out there, just did not fall into the dragnet of phone numbers that were set to activate.
- meaydinli 2y agoI'd guess anybody with a pager in that part of the world dumped theirs as soon as they heard what happened.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoHow do you judge that likely? It seems just as possible if not more that it was a single lot purchased by Hezbollah for Hezbollah.
- londons_explore 2y agoI bet lots of people with that model of pager are now ripping them open to check for explosives. If we don't see pictures of unexploded ones, then I'd guess they were all triggered, and the only ones we might see are devices that were turned off at the time.
- sroussey 2y agoAgreed. Will be interesting if there is a teardown or not.
- barbazoo 2y ago> These pagers were 100% a supply chain attack. What did you base that on though, 100% is pretty confident
- curiousgal 2y ago[flagged]
- IncreasePosts 2y agoWas this pager attack worse than October 7th?
- curiousgal 2y agoNo. October 7th made me sympathize with Israel. What followed that made defending Israel impossible.
- lawlessone 2y agoOctober 7th was obviously far worse. But I don't think people would agree that police should stoop to same levels of criminals. It wouldn't be considered a success if police stopped a bank robbery by killing bystanders.
- catlikesshrimp 2y agoWhat is following October 7th (so far, today included) is far worse. And worst of all, it won't be over anytime soon.
- enterprise_cog 2y ago[dead]
- shadowgovt 2y agoA bunch of explosives strapped to pagers wouldn't have succeeded in the way this attack did; it'd have been way too obvious. It'll be interesting to find out (if we ever do) how they modified the pagers to hide the payload.
- scosman 2y ago[flagged]
- colecut 2y agoThe "how" seems pretty important to me...
- scosman 2y ago[flagged]
- talldatethrow 2y ago[flagged]
- doubleorseven 2y 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 2y agoHezbollah has said some time ago they were switching to pagers because Israel can get inside their cell phones.
- cachvico 2y agoWith a statement like that one wonders if Hezbollah leadership itself has been infiltrated.
- kspacewalk2 2y agoIsrael has an intelligence agency that's generally recognized to be quite competent. I'm sure it would have taken them approximately 5 minutes to learn from their many spies that a new form of communications is being used.
- andyetandyet 2y ago[flagged]
- gojomo 2y agoNot really: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-h... They just didn't realize how real this particular plan was. It's quite likely Hamas is regularly bluffing similar attacks in many potentially-compromised channels. If they then see Israel react, they've received info about Israel's capabilities & tactics – and maybe even ways to misdirect Israeli forces with future feints. And any real plans may stay hidden amongst dozens/hundreds of other "false alarms".
- more_corn 2y agoI 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.
- XorNot 2y agoThe 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-pack/ https://store.jtech.com/jtech-guestcall-pager-nimh-battery-5...
- pts_ 2y agoIt's supply chain attack meets the physical world, and now might be replicated.
- fhub 2y agoShaped 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).
- rendang 2y agoWouldn't a shaped charge be pointed in a specific direction, and hence could miss depending on the device's position in target's pocket?
- Sakos 2y agoYou might prefer a shaped charge to reduce the likelihood of injuring bystanders and to ensure that what little explosive you can fit in there can kill whoever is using it.
- fhub 2y agoWatching the grocery store security video, I think a multi-directional shaped charge is plausible with pressure evident in two directions. But very hard to draw any conclusions.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoThis is unlikely to be a shaped charge, there is not enough space. High explosives are inherently directional depending on the geometry of the explosive and point of detonation. As a practical matter of fitting explosives into a pager, I would expect most of the explosion to be directed perpendicular to the face of the pager in both directions. In almost all cases, carrying or using the pager would put the person directly on the main axis.
- meepmorp 2y agoYeah, everyone talking about shaped charges or (micro-) explosively formed penetrators seems to overlook the fact that, compared to just a regular bomb, they'd be less strictly effective for situations where you can't control the alignment of the charge to the target. Don't overthink it - just a bit of RDX and a detonator does wonders.
- hello_computer 2y ago[flagged]
- batch12 2y agoUnderstanding how the attack was carried out is the first step to identifying the vulnerability/risk/threat so it can be prevented. You don't have to be an expert or defer to experts in everything to be allowed to talk about it.
- hello_computer 2y agoIt’s not quantum mechanics. They put bombs inside pagers and pressed a button.
- batch12 2y agoI must have missed the comment related to quantum mechanics. If not, you're twisting the conversation. The discussion I've seen so far has been to speculate whether someone put bombs inside pagers or if stock devices were manipulated to make them explode. The comment I replied to implied that only "expert killers" should be having this discussion, whatever that means. Edit: The reason the difference is worth discussion is because one is a targeted supply chain attack and the other is a vulnerability that could be exploited to cause even more harm.
- hello_computer 2y ago[flagged]
- NelsonMinar 2y agoI wonder what Israel did to ensure that only legitimate targets were harmed by the sabotaged pagers.
- yoavm 2y agoThe fact that these pagers were to be used by Hezbollah is what they did.
- rdtsc 2y agoWould 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”.
- Suppafly 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ars 2y agoThese pagers were distributed only to Hezbollah members, these were not just standard pagers anyone could buy.
- helpfulContrib 2y ago[dead]
- sureglymop 2y agoEven though I personally doubt this statement, care to explain how that would possibly be enough? If an explosion happens, everyone in range is hit.
- 2y ago
- megous 2y agoIf 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 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 2y agoNo, 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_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_g...
- segasaturn 2y ago[flagged]
- bjourne 2y ago[flagged]
- deepsummer 2y agoh
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- markus_zhang 2y agoMy 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 2y agoThere 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.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI 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 2y agoI 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.
- tamimio 2y 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.
- bjourne 2y ago[flagged]
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoMilitaries 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.
- burningChrome 2y ago[flagged]
- limit499karma 2y ago[flagged]
- almogo 2y agoThe pagers were carried specifically by Hezbollah operatives. You can't be both an innocent member of the general public and an operative of a paramilitary org at the same time.
- limit499karma 2y ago[flagged]
- tptacek 2y agoWhere are you reading that these devices were on "store shelves"? Why would they be? Hezbollah doesn't buy their pagers retail, do they? i edited some certainty out of this
- tptacek 2y agoLet me add some certainty back to it: both Reuters and the NYT are reporting these are pagers specifically procured by Hezbollah, directly from a manufacturer. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-pagers-explosives.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/world/middleeast/israel-h...
- colordrops 2y agoSo you are saying that if hezbollah exploded weapons on off-duty military walking around in malls and hospitals in the US it would not be terrorism? Because that's exactly what happened here.
- humansareok1 2y agoHaving 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.
- mattmaroon 2y agoMy 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.
- XorNot 2y agoThis 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).
- gslepak 2y 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 2y agoHonestly 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.)
- gslepak 2y agoAfter I posted my comment the title was updated to be a little bit more neutral. The previous headline was emphasizing a little too strongly the assumption that this attack was against Hezbollah only, and as you mention there are "exceptions", meaning, civilians and non-militants (including children) were killed and injured. EDIT: in other words, the headline is/was written with the assumption that whoever was attacked was a member of Hezbollah, but this isn't true.
- gslepak 2y agoWhen half the official death toll are children and medical staff, calling this an attack on "Hezbollah" is a clear form of IDF-leaning bias: https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1836428722381164935 https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1836428722381164935
- pragma_x 2y 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.
- wut42 2y 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.
- dyauspitr 2y agoI 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 2y agowe 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
- awqe 2y ago[flagged]
- donthatemebro 2y ago[flagged]
- loodish 2y agoThe 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 2y agoFor 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 2y 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 2y agoHas 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.