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Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

reuters.com

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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#221

Post by Waterluvian »

As I'm trying to better understand the situation from a technology perspective, I'm curious: has anyone experienced a lithium battery catastrophically failing during use (not charging) and without plenty of warning (ie. gets warm, hot, scalding)?

My experience has been that at worst, they overheat over minutes to hours, and then hiss, smoke, pop, and catch fire.

I guess what I'm wondering is: is it at all plausible that this happened without the use of some amount of added explosives? (edit: I saw a few videos. I cannot imagine a mobile lithium battery is capable of such a sudden and violent explosion)

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#223

Post by rtaylorgarlock »

some_random wrote: post #185
sbeam wrote: post #179

If 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

Exactly. 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 ;)

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#225

Post by tptacek »

Waterluvian wrote: post #221

As I'm trying to better understand the situation from a technology perspective, I'm curious: has anyone experienced a lithium battery catastrophically failing during use (not charging) and without plenty of warning (ie. gets warm, hot, scalding)? My experience has been that at worst, they overheat over minutes to hours, and then hiss, smoke, pop, and catch fire. I guess what I'm wondering is: is it at all plausible t…

It's probably going to turn out to be supply chain and explosives.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#226

Post by tw04 »

sbeam wrote: post #179

If 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…

>I already wonder if this was anything that was planted in the devices perviously

That seems to be the case with almost complete certainty. They said it was a new batch of pagers that the targets/victims/whatever you choose to call them received in the last few months.

>The pagers that detonated were the latest model brought in by Hezbollah in recent months, three security sources said.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-m...

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#227

Post by lawlessone »

einszwei wrote: post #196

From Israel's perspective, this supply chain attack was undoubtedly a clever move, but I can't help but wonder about its long-term consequences. Although it was aimed at harming Israel's adversaries, third-party countries may now hesitate to involve Israel in their supply chains. There's also the risk that other major producers could replicate this tactic, potentially leading to further escalation in the region or be…

Yeah every company that has a part of their supply chain via Israel must be wondering now if this could be done to their devices.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#228

Post by brookst »

minkles wrote: post #208
einszwei wrote: post #196

From Israel's perspective, this supply chain attack was undoubtedly a clever move, but I can't help but wonder about its long-term consequences. Although it was aimed at harming Israel's adversaries, third-party countries may now hesitate to involve Israel in their supply chains. There's also the risk that other major producers could replicate this tactic, potentially leading to further escalation in the region or be…

This is a one shot attack. They will never be able to do it again. And I don't think most of the world has pissed off Mossad quite as much as Hezbollah. Assuming they even did it!

As someone else posted, it's not entirely novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash#Assassination
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