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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

#271

Post by edm0nd »

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…

These pagers were 100% a supply chain attack. Intercepted and modified with small explosives embedded in them or swapped the entire shipment out with ones with a small explosives in them.

There is no possibility these explosions are from battery overloads via an exploit or firmware hack.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#273

Post by [deleted] »

apienx wrote: post #260

"These devices don't appear to be designed to be lethal.[..] They are, for the most part, low charge so not packing enough to actually kill somebody.[..] Let's not forget that this comes on the same day that Israel has extended its war aims to including expelling Hezbollah basically from the border." -- BBC's Security Correspondent Frank Gardner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNEb-dY3tRY

[deleted]

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#274

Post by scosman »

harimau777 wrote: post #167

This 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?

They killed an 8 year old girl with this attack. I'm sure there was already a huge amount of collateral damage from 2000+ eyes-off-taret explosions.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#277

Post by wkat4242 »

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

Ahh so a simple supply chain attack. I was thinking it might have leveraged the built in batteries. But it was always unlikely, especially in a receive-only device.

Still, if you have the capability of such a supply chain attack, I would imagine the rewards of silent surveillance (tracking, audio) would be of much higher value than this kind of attack where 3 out of 1000s targets were killed.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#278

Post by mrtksn »

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

> 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-explod...

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.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#279

Post by ofcrpls »

zelias wrote: post #248

I am for some reason reminded of this classic scene from The Wire [1] where a detective sells a trove of preemptively wiretapped burner cell phones to a drug organization [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDalKxcLQC8

Dark Wire by Joseph Cox came out this earlier in the summer that covers the 2010s version of this with an Android phone company being stood up as a replacement for Blackberries

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59644256-dark-wire

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#280

Post by elliekelly »

frabbit wrote: post #214
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…

[flagged]

Maybe future iterations of this attack will include facial recognition to determine user age > ~18?
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