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Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#182This being a hack is improbable in my opinion. If you see the pictures of the aftermath, the damage is too big to be the result of a lithium battery explosion. Moreover the devices exploded at the same time in different locations (won’t happen if they made the battery overheat till explosion) HA probably bought a bad batch with implanted explosives and they set it off now.
There's footage on Twitter showing an actual detonation, with a bang. Not a huge blast (the man falls to the ground injured, but bystanders seemed unharmed). Definitely not the rapid burning 'whoosh' of a battery fire.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#183At least Eight killed and 2,750 wounded (200 of those in a critical condition) [1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#184newer reports saying 1000s not 100s https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...
> More than 1,000 people, including Hezbollah fighters and medics The CNN title implies that only Hezbollah members were targeted were reality seems different. It's crazy a country is capable of doing a "special security operation" on civilians of another country without any international sanctions.
Hezbollah are a paramilitary group at best, not civilians. And they are designated terrorists in many countries.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#185If 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…
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
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#186Was going to ask how common pagers were, but suppose still used by emergency services etc and especially in warzones of questionable cell network reliability
Hezbollah reportedly bans its members from carrying cell phones and has them carry pagers instead: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pagers-drones-how-...
Thats an interesting attack vector on its own. Who does not regularly carry a phone with them these days?
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#187Was going to ask how common pagers were, but suppose still used by emergency services etc and especially in warzones of questionable cell network reliability
Hezbollah reportedly bans its members from carrying cell phones and has them carry pagers instead: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pagers-drones-how-...
That was a mistake. If they'd gone for the thinnest smartphone they could buy, there'd be no chance of anybody hiding a small bomb inside it.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#188It 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…
They’re pagers, so it could also be a modification of the firmware to listen for a certain message (could it be as simple as a pocsag network where all of the pagers would get every message and only alert if it’s targeted for them?)
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#189This seems like it would have the potential for a lot of collateral damage due to the possibility that modified pagers might enter general distribution. That is to say, how do they insure that a given shipment of pagers are only going to Hezbollah as opposed to some of them going to people like aid workers?
Who uses pagers? Aid workers carry phones. The pagers are deliberate opsec move for Hezbollah.
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#190This seems like it would have the potential for a lot of collateral damage due to the possibility that modified pagers might enter general distribution. That is to say, how do they insure that a given shipment of pagers are only going to Hezbollah as opposed to some of them going to people like aid workers?
I suspect that is an intentional side effect against the whole pager network. It is now totally compromised which means they can no longer use passive channels as a communication medium. This effectively shut down their comms structure.
As for aid workers, they mostly use whatever low ball android phones they can get their hands on I know someone who volunteered out there and everyone uses them and Telegram). I don't think that will impact them at all.