Sounds like Israel added plastic explosives to pagers and managed to supply them to Hezbollah. Then, I assume, they triggered only those pagers belonging to known operatives. I'm guessing some did not explode and we'll get to see the device inside and possibly understand the mechanism.
Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#122Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#123> The affected pagers were from a new shipment that Hezbollah had received in recent days, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by the Wall Street Journal. 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.
> Hard to see how a remote exploit could detonate the battery
Especially seeing as pagers typically use more stable NiMH batteries over lithium ones.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#124Why was this flagged? I vouched for it as it would make for an interesting discussion about the security of these devices and how this kind of cyberattack might have happened. Are smartphones, for example, also vulnerable to it?
> Why was this flagged? Anything any particularly motivated group dislikes here gets flagged; always been this way. Thanks for vouching. > Are smartphones, for example, also vulnerable to it? I also would love an answer to this question. Up until 12 minutes ago, I would never have thought _blowing up_ hundreds of pagers simultaneously was a realistic scenario. If anyone can make sense of how this actually worked I'd…
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#125It must be a combination of hardware (put a bomb in it) and software (trigger an explosion when a particular command is received) hack. Triggering an explosion of all devices is needed because if people started hearing about exploding pagers, they'd place their own far away from anything precious to them. Geez, I thought this kind of hack is the stuff of (bad) action movies. I wonder if there's a pager that was power…
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#126[flagged]
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#127not unprecedented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash#Assassination
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#128It's absurd that this was flagged and pushed off the front page. Either it was a supply chain attack with explosives installed, or this was a hack that caused battery explosion. Either way this is extremely relevant to Hacker News.
@dang
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#129[flagged]
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#130It's just a matter of knowing your battery's power management firmware. You can overload the power control circuits that pagers or smartphones by creating a massive surge (sending signals to the IGBT drivers) that will cause the battery to explode. If the battery is moderately charged, the explosion is devastating. Hacker teams from the notorious Israeli ShinBet know of many bugs of this type.
Other comments here are suggesting it was more likely a real explosive put in as part of a physical supply chain attack. Anyone able to say which is more plausible?
The WSJ report claims that:
> The official said some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them before they burst.
Sounds more like a battery explosion, but it's way too early to tell.