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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
by some_random 2y 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 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?