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Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

reuters.com

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Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#161

Post by xenospn »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #151
mmastrac wrote: post #116

I guess they are taking a victory lap around yesterday's major embarrassment. I never thought that you could dismantle a terrorist organization so surgically by just booby-trapping comms devices. This will certainly be made into a blockbuster movie in ten years. I'll re-iterate my previous comment on this matter: this is an impressive supply-chain hack with absolutely oversized results, and you gotta hand it to them…

It doesn’t look very surgical to me given the civilian casualties and general disregard of what can happen to innocent people. If anything this looks more like a state-sponsored terrorist attack than covert ops with collateral damage.

Anything more surgical than this is actual surgery.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#162

Post by tamimio »

tptacek wrote: post #140
Zironic wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I can't say I'm a big fan of this massive scale booby trapping devices all over civilian society and I suspect most nation stats are not very happy about this either. The EU is probably not going to be happy at all about Israel using an EU flagged company to do it either. This is going to create a lot of distrust in the international supply chain.

These aren't civilian devices.

Says who? Pagers are used by doctors and icom are used by pretty much anyone who needs that communication, like construction workers in a site or first responders.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#163

Post by exe34 »

mrtksn wrote: post #90

Ha, maybe this will be the turning point for international corporations becoming national-only? Or maybe make the big brands like Apple/Samsung the only trusted device manufacturers and completely wipe out the small ones? No iPhones exploded so far but I wouldn't be surprised if the paranoia takes over everywhere and local supply chains and local producers become a thing. "Foreign social media platforms" was already…

> Don't they see that booby trapping large number of devices rhymes with poisoning the well? It wouldn't help with antisemitism but that's another discussion.

could you expand on what you mean here? I don't understand either the argument or the conclusion. thanks!

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#164

Post by gruez »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #151
mmastrac wrote: post #116

I guess they are taking a victory lap around yesterday's major embarrassment. I never thought that you could dismantle a terrorist organization so surgically by just booby-trapping comms devices. This will certainly be made into a blockbuster movie in ten years. I'll re-iterate my previous comment on this matter: this is an impressive supply-chain hack with absolutely oversized results, and you gotta hand it to them…

It doesn’t look very surgical to me given the civilian casualties and general disregard of what can happen to innocent people. If anything this looks more like a state-sponsored terrorist attack than covert ops with collateral damage.

Agreed. Stuxnet was "surgical". Causing hundreds of explosions in proximity of civilians is not.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#166

Post by vorpalhex »

astroid wrote: post #134
mmastrac wrote: post #116

I guess they are taking a victory lap around yesterday's major embarrassment. I never thought that you could dismantle a terrorist organization so surgically by just booby-trapping comms devices. This will certainly be made into a blockbuster movie in ten years. I'll re-iterate my previous comment on this matter: this is an impressive supply-chain hack with absolutely oversized results, and you gotta hand it to them…

[flagged]

8 senior Hezbollah officers are dead. So far the only clear indication of a non-Hezbollah injury is from a Hezbollah officers daughter.

Sounds successful and well targeted.

If you don't want your electronics to explode randomly, don't attack Jews.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#167

Post by dmicah »

mrtksn wrote: post #90

Ha, maybe this will be the turning point for international corporations becoming national-only? Or maybe make the big brands like Apple/Samsung the only trusted device manufacturers and completely wipe out the small ones? No iPhones exploded so far but I wouldn't be surprised if the paranoia takes over everywhere and local supply chains and local producers become a thing. "Foreign social media platforms" was already…

I think the variety of consumer electronics is too large to be limited to only a few large manufacturers.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#168

Post by mmastrac »

astroid wrote: post #134
mmastrac wrote: post #116

I guess they are taking a victory lap around yesterday's major embarrassment. I never thought that you could dismantle a terrorist organization so surgically by just booby-trapping comms devices. This will certainly be made into a blockbuster movie in ten years. I'll re-iterate my previous comment on this matter: this is an impressive supply-chain hack with absolutely oversized results, and you gotta hand it to them…

[flagged]

Wrong on all three:

1) The victims of yesterday's attack were overwhelmingly terrorist soldiers and mid-level management which fits the definition of surgical. If the results of this operation are as good as suggested by all the early reports, they just carved a major hole in the upper ranks of the organization (not even including the major damage they've caused over the last six months with surgical strikes on leaders).

2) We don't have confirmation that's it's them (but it likely is), and we know far more than that: we know that it incapacitated thousands of members of a designated terrorist organization with minimal impact outside of them.

3) Well, that's just your opinion, man.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#169

Post by showerst »

Zironic wrote: post #132
mrtksn wrote: post #90

Ha, maybe this will be the turning point for international corporations becoming national-only? Or maybe make the big brands like Apple/Samsung the only trusted device manufacturers and completely wipe out the small ones? No iPhones exploded so far but I wouldn't be surprised if the paranoia takes over everywhere and local supply chains and local producers become a thing. "Foreign social media platforms" was already…

Yeah, I can't say I'm a big fan of this massive scale booby trapping devices all over civilian society and I suspect most nation stats are not very happy about this either. The EU is probably not going to be happy at all about Israel using an EU flagged company to do it either. This is going to create a lot of distrust in the international supply chain.

> This is going to create a lot of distrust in the international supply chain.

Is it? If your threat model includes Mossad (or really any nation state) then you shouldn't have trusted those devices in the first place. Even if you didn't have "tiny explosives" on your bingo card, certainly bugs (hardware or software) should've been on there.

Given that those pagers are commonly used by doctors and none of them have been reported to explode, I think we can guess that it was targeted to the batches delivered directly to Hezbollah.

Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

#170

Post by exe34 »

gruez wrote: post #152
tptacek wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't civilian devices.

The claim isn't that they're "civilian devices", it's that they're "devices all over civilian society". That's relevant because bobby trapping them is liable to cause casualties.

this was a special shipment created for the terrorists. this isn't just putting a bomb into every pager.
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