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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

#361

Post by elteto »

This almost reads like science fiction, what an incredible attack from a technical POV. A couple of thoughts:

1. The beepers were compromised and have been for a long time. I don't know how easy it is to exfiltrate data from them if they are receive-only devices. At any rate it shows that Israel is capable of intercepting and manipulating low-tech comms. What's left for Hezbollah to use?

2. The next step is to hack into hospital record systems and get a list of all patients admitted today.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#362

Post by hello_computer »

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…

BDS looks better and better with each passing day.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#363

Post by walthamstow »

barbazoo wrote: post #354
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…

> From Israel's perspective, this supply chain attack was undoubtedly a clever move From The Guardian [1]: > Eight killed and 2,750 wounded Was that a clever move if you're killing "only" 8 potential adversaries? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...

If their comms are severely disrupted, yes. Even if it wasn't militarily effective, it's still quite a clever attack.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#364

Post by bhouston »

Seems like a harbrining of war, if the pager network was compromised, thus burns the compromised network and also harms a lot of people.

Most major newspapers in Israel are saying that Netanyahu wants an invasion of Southern Lebanon:

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bje3pjv60

https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/article-820399

https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-general-said-pushing-for-g...

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#365

Post by mmastrac »

That's an impressive supply-chain hack. Spend years showing how insecure modern telecom devices are and scare your enemy into going old-school, receive-only. Set up a shell company to sell pagers to your enemy's shell company. Give them devices implanted with a small explosive charge pointed inward, knowing they will be worn around the waist most of the time.

Hack the backend server, send a coordinated page to all the pagers at the same time. You've just injured and identified most of your enemies, incapacitated them, completely broken their communication network and effectively given you weeks of disarray to do whatever you want to further disrupt them.

You have to hand it to them -- it's a clever strategy with minimal casualties outside of your enemy. This is a Stuxnet-level hack that we'll probably never fully understand.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#367

Post by mathandstuff »

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 didn't. Al Jazeera's headline was updated to read "Lebanon’s health minister says 8 killed, 2,750 wounded by exploding pagers."

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#368

Post by spacephysics »

elteto wrote: post #361

This almost reads like science fiction, what an incredible attack from a technical POV. A couple of thoughts: 1. The beepers were compromised and have been for a long time. I don't know how easy it is to exfiltrate data from them if they are receive-only devices. At any rate it shows that Israel is capable of intercepting and manipulating low-tech comms. What's left for Hezbollah to use? 2. The next step is to hack i…

Unfortunately innocent people were also harmed, don’t think a straight list will serve anyone

Honestly I doubt Israel/Mossad doesn’t know who is in Hezbollah, i think this is more of a direct attack (obviously) mixed with scare/terror benefit

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#369

Post by spidersenses »

edm0nd wrote: post #271
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.

>or firmware hack.

There's still the question of how the explosive capsule would have been triggered. It couldn't just explode at the first incoming call. There must be more to that.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#370

Post by John23832 »

barbazoo wrote: post #354
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…

> From Israel's perspective, this supply chain attack was undoubtedly a clever move From The Guardian [1]: > Eight killed and 2,750 wounded Was that a clever move if you're killing "only" 8 potential adversaries? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/17/middle-ea...

Killing isn't always the goal.

The effect of this "action" is the same as a bouncing betty. (I assume) The goal is to incapacitate and use resources.

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