8 ms·
> 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 fur
by 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.
- londons_explore 2y agonews reports suggest 1000+ of these devices exploded. In a country where lots of people would happily crack open the lid of a device to replace the battery or otherwise tinker, the explosives must have been well hidden, not just tucked into the case.
- ArnoVW 2y agoit is my understanding that the devices had been delivered recently
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ale42 2y agoDetection by airport security might probably be avoided using the right type of explosive. I have no real idea about this, but I suspect that any nation-state with enough budget and know-how can manufacture undetectable or very hard-to-detect explosive devices. If the explosive is encapsulated in a sealed airtight container, which is properly "washed" after manufacturing, I guess there's no way to chemically detect the explosive inside. Not sure about how to avoid X-Ray detection but that's generally not the way explosives are actually detected. And, is the device anyway going to pass through airport security? I guess the owners are not really travelling on commercial airliners.
- mrtksn 2y agoThese devices apparently were distributed to thousands of operatives. I would imagine that people having those are some of the more elite ones and they probably will travel for business reasons, be it personal business or Hezbollah business. A few who choose to take their pagers with them(i.e. will not be heading straight home after travel, so brings the pager) are huge risk IMHO. Even a single incident may reveal the plot. I don't know how those detectors at the airports work exactly but they are probably playing cat and mouse game with the people who are into smuggling things and as a result they are probably aware of the more advanced methods like injecting things into the plastic.
- rdtsc 2y ago> 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 That is the most plausible explanation. It can’t be an obvious thing or someone would notice it. If it looks like a plain battery pack, nobody would think of cutting it open.
- londons_explore 2y agoThe explosive here could be perhaps just 8mm x 8mm x 8mm to do the sort of blasts you see in the videos. Thats fairly small, and could easily be hidden in a device. Inside the battery is perhaps the best hidden, but you'd need to own a bunch of battery manufacturing facilities (expensive). Cheaper would be to simply remove some other component (eg. one of two speakers) and replace it.
- HenryBemis 2y agoConsidering the tech industry of Israel and the bottomless military/security budget, this is very plausible. Also considering that a plan like that must have taken many months/years start-to-end, this just makes me wonder what else is booby-trapped(?), fridges? laptops? microwave ovens? the next door flat? flower pots? Stuff like that take the paranoia levels all the way to 11.
- exe34 2y agoa lot of people claim "we will strike fear in the hearts of our enemies". Israel makes them quietly shit their pants instead.
- rurban 2y agoThey did certainly not make them shit their pants, what a childish idea. They'll cause a big backlash. And the best they have are again suicide bombers in Israeli cities
- 2y ago
- delfinom 2y agoI work in the battery space. All you have to do is build replacement batteries without the pressure relief vents. You can easily get a Chinese manufacture to do this for a fee and properly some complaining about how stupid it is to do. Then wrap it in some nichrome wire and have a micro run some power through it. The nichrome wire will overheat the cell really quickly causing the cell to rapidly over pressurize and boom. Small pouch or prismatic cells that would be used at the size of a pager generally won't burn. And I speak from experience of doing stupid shit to them in the name of testing, nothing like using the nail puller side of a hammer to puncture them, or rigging up a fixture with 3 concrete nail guns to shoot it or well, fun stuff
- mrtksn 2y agoVery interesting, so the battery modification is plausible it seems.
- highcountess 2y agoI agree with this theory even though I am not even sure it would require a specific modification like the mentioned heating wire, if you can simply use the existing circuit with some instruction to cause component overheating with the same effect. Another reason I do not believe it was an explosive is that a clandestine explosive installation would have resulted in far greater damage and included shrapnel. Because why would you not install very high explosives and shrapnel in a shape charge that directed the explosion into the likely body of the wearer if you are taking the risk of intercepting and making a physical modification. This is also less Stuxnet and more infiltrating insecure systems of vehicles to drive by wire accelerate cars into objects. There have been examples of this
- zdragnar 2y agoA shape charge would be pointless because you can't guarantee how the device is worn- one news article mentioned most people carry them in their pockets, so a shape charge would be blowing most of the energy away from the target in 50% of the cases.
- varjag 2y agoOne easy way to conceal the explosive would be to overmold it in a cavity inside the plastic enclosure. This would escape all but the most thorough inspections. And since battery terminals are typically also embedded in the plastic this can provide a clandestine supply of power and signal with something like Dallas protocol to the fuse.
- water-data-dude 2y agoI don’t think they’re saying you’d need to change the chemistry though, they’re saying they could have altered way it was packaged so that when it started burning there was nowhere for the gas to go. Similar to how firecrackers work. If you take a firecracker apart and light the powder, you’ll get a flash and a lot of smoke, but no bang. The explosion comes from the pressure building up in an enclosure. Disclaimer: not a chemist. Just a former unwisely curious kid
- Beijinger 2y ago"If you take a firecracker apart and light the powder, you’ll get a flash and a lot of smoke, but no bang. The explosion comes from the pressure building up in an enclosure." True. But if you open enough firecrackers and put the powder in a small plastic container you will not get a bang but a buff and a fireball the size of a car. Disclaimer: I am a chemist and a former very unwisely curious kid
- bagels 2y agoCCTV footage of one of the explosions: 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... This isn't how lithium batteries fail.
- LightBug1 2y ago[flagged]
- underlipton 2y ago[flagged]
- mytailorisrich 2y agoAll the media reports say that these were the pagers distributed by Hezbollah to its members. Objectively this is therefore targeted, not indiscriminate...
- secondcoming 2y agoRight but these were exploding in public right next to innocent people. There's CCTV footage of some of them exploding.
- mytailorisrich 2y agoThat's still a targeted attack and it seems from the media reports so far that the "collateral damage" is remarkably low, actually.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- underlipton 2y ago
- mdasen 2y agoIt looks like 1-way pagers sold in the US are powered by AA or AAA batteries: https://pagersdirect.net/collections/1-way-pagers https://pagersdirect.net/collections/1-way-pagers. That's not to say that they couldn't have put a lithium AA or AAA battery into the pagers or inserted a modified AA/AAA battery that was a combination of lithium (with greater power density) and explosive. It's also possible that they have fancier 1-way pagers than I'm aware of.
- mrtksn 2y agoAccording to this post, the pagers that exploded had rechargeable batteries. They even used USB-C, so Hezbollah must be using somewhat fancy pagers: https://x.com/BabakTaghvaee1/status/1836082246538629490 https://x.com/BabakTaghvaee1/status/1836082246538629490
- londons_explore 2y agoSurprising nobody has yet posted the make/model. Really shows that the HN community and the victims have very little overlap.
- chasil 2y agoElsewhere here listed as: Gold Apollo Rugged Pager AR924 https://www.google.com/search?q=About+https://www.gapollo.com.tw/rugged-pager-ar924/&tbm=ilp&cs=1&ctx=atr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiD1-aCy8qIAxXhqokEHT52C1QQv5AHegQIABAC https://www.google.com/search?q=About+https://www.gapollo.co...
- cdchn 2y agoI remember reading once that Apollo is pretty much the only name in the game any more for pagers.
- polishdude20 2y agoHow do you fit an explosive into a pager and still have the pager work? Like, aren't they already optimized to have everything for inside super tight?
- tptacek 2y agoI think it makes more sense to think of these as explosive devices manufactured by/for Israel that are just designed to pass as pagers.
- bluescrn 2y agoPagers, by definition, are likely to be older technology. The internals could be replaced with modern smaller and lower-power equivalents, requiring a smaller battery, and saving enough space. (Or maybe somebody just donated a batch of innocent-looking devices to 'the cause', or offered a bargain on some 'extra secure' pagers?)
- fencepost 2y agoThinner (less durable, but who cares?) plastic shell to free up space for explosives, but would likely be obvious if someone opened it - which might be a common thing if these were being used as remote triggering devices. If they were using a AA battery, replace the battery with something that provides you space to work (e.g. put in a AAAA or button cell that would provide appropriate power but lower capacity) because you don't really care if the battery life drops from months to weeks.
- Mtinie 2y agoI can easily envision a scenario that would preemptively “explain” why the pagers are internally different from past models: Supplier: “Hey, we’ve got a refreshed model of the pager you wanted to buy in bulk. Interested?” Buyer: “I don’t know, how do they work?” Supplier: “Same as the other ones, minus a bit less plastic protection. With the weight savings they’ve added a new hardened receiver that’s supposedly more secure and will keep communications private. Also, they are 50% cheaper per unit…” Buyer: “Say no more. We’ll take them.”
- 2y ago
- Hermandw 2y agoAmir Tsarfati: The updated numbers: 4000 wounded of which 400 in critical conditions Al Jazeera from a Lebanese security source: The pagers were brought to Lebanon 5 months ago. They were boobytrapped in advance. Each device contained an explosive weighing no more than 20 grams.
- oldpersonintx 2y agowhoever is good/evil aside... hezbollah got totally owned and look like fools...relying on tech they just took at face value out of the box
- olalonde 2y agoTo add insult to injury, they specifically used "low tech" pagers in order to avoid Israel attacks.
- sushid 2y agoWhy did the Hezbollah even leverage beepers in the first place? As in why not just use telegram or signal or some other app of choice?
- hattmall 2y agoSo that Israel couldn't track their locations via cell networks. Sure you could use Signal or w/e but it's the cell IDs and knowing where people are that was the issue. The pagers do far less, if any, two way communication so it's not likely to give away location data.
- zhengyi13 2y agoPagers don't have GPS devices embedded in them. Apps (some more or less than others) represent a target for a nation state to pursue for information, graph analysis, bugging, etc.
- netsharc 2y agoEven dumb phones can be tracked by antenna triangulation, and I wouldn't be surprised if Israeli hackers are inside Lebanese phone networks...
- roywiggins 2y agoEven a dumbphone with the GPS physically removed is going to be a lot easier to target than a one-way pager, since they are always chatting with the cell towers.
- jameshart 2y agoPagers don’t have GPS devices embedded in them - that you know of. If you can’t control your supply chain then that isn’t guaranteed. After all, most pagers don’t contain explosive charges either.
- gsich 2y agoGPS is receive only.
- ra 2y ago
- xupybd 2y agoCan you make the case out of a solid explosive material?
- ethagnawl 2y agoI had a rechargeable battery explode in my kitchen recently and it was like a small grenade went off. I'll see if I can find the photos but it shattered trim and bits went through a screen on the other side of the room. So, an "excited" AA (which, I believe is what pagers usually use) could do a surprising amount of damage. Photo: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/403/042/641/683/789/original/943764863035d0d0.jpg https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/40...
- CamperBob2 2y agoThose are NiMHs, aren't they? WTF? That shouldn't be possible. Any idea what prompted the explosion?
- pvaldes 2y agoUrg, I used exactly this brand in the past. Is an interesting problem. Maybe the experts in the area could help here. I assume that a worn battery near the end of its life is more prone to explode, but I wonder... Would the dead cells in the battery take part in that; or are just dead and not reactive. In other words: if a battery has only a 30% remaining alive; or a laptop has a very worn battery, would an hypothetical explosion by overheating be much less severe? or is still so dangerous as new?.