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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

#301

Post by elorant »

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?

Pagers could have certain security options that would interest only a military organization. We don't know at which stage these were intercepted. They could just as easily be targeted to Hezbollah from the beginning of the sale. Advertise something that could be catered to them and once they take the bait go ahead and booby trap them all

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#302

Post by janmo »

Intelligence agencies put their bugs within the hardware of electronic devices you order online.

If you believe being the target of an intelligence agency never order anything online. They will put the bug inside, especially if it is an electronic device such as a phone/laptop/TV/coffee machine.

Best solution is to go buy it from a random store and have a good home security system.

Also weigh your electronic devices laptop/phone to check if the weight differs from its original weight, it should not deviate.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#303

Post by bigbinary »

chrisco255 wrote: post #272

While a clever attack it's also highly likely there was collateral damage to nonviolent or noninvolved bystanders.

Already confirmed as there is one 8 year old girl reportedly in the fatalities. This attack will add to the stereotype that Israel attacks indiscriminately.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#304

Post by colecut »

scosman wrote: post #283
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]

The "how" seems pretty important to me...

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#306

Post by jajko »

scosman wrote: post #274
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.

[flagged]

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#307

Post by doubleorseven »

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…

> If we try to do what we are best at here at HN, let’s focus the discussion on the technical aspects of it.

Technical? Yes it's interesting but you are missing the biggest part here: how do you convince such a huge organization to switch so many devices? This human engineering is the really interesting part here.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#310

Post by jakeinspace »

wkat4242 wrote: post #266
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…

Compared to Stuxnet it's also a first where this kind of attack was done at scale. Regardless of the particular target it's of course the question whether this is a desirable practice in cyber warfare. For such a new field there are very few ethical guidelines yet, like we do have for more conventional warfare.

Unlike stuxnet, this attack had a lot of non-hezbolah civilian casualties. It’s "targeted" in a sense, but not really much more targeted than a drive-by assassination attempt. Anybody close to these people could have sustained serious injury, and there are reports of children injured and dead. We’ll have to wait for details to emerge.

Politically, this is the sort of action that invites comparison to conventional terrorism. It also begs the question of why Hezbollah or other actors shouldn’t try a similar attack against civilian targets. It’s almost like a chemical or biological attack, which most countries shy away from because it’s so hard to defend against (a big part of why it’s illegal). No country can perfectly safeguard its supply chain from intentional sabotage.

I’m afraid that the entire world is a little bit less safe after this move. Maybe Israel is goading Hezbollah into all-out war, who knows, but this affects all of us.

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