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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

#471

Post by loceng »

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

And yet it took 5 hours for IDF to respond to Hamas breaching their border - where it only takes a maximum of 45 minutes via helicopter to get to any point along the Israel-Palestine border?

Is there any technology possible to help people more seriously see incongruences for what they are, technology to help prevent people from propaganda - or is that primarily simply a systems control issue - education system, information system, etc - that would be party to a censorship-suppression narrative control and distraction apparatus?

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#473

Post by delichon »

netsharc wrote: post #39

It 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…

Warning, under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations in the US civil fines of up to $500k per violation apply to software exports classified as related to munitions or military applications. You may want to consult an attorney before sharing such algorithms on a public forum.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#475

Post by make3 »

koolba wrote: post #395
mmastrac wrote: post #365

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 th…

> Hack the backend server, send a coordinated page to all the pagers at the same time. You likely don’t even need to hack anything if you coordinate based on time. A built in clock would eliminate the need for any external signal and work in a, no pun intended, dead zone. If the pager itself is hacked, the software could also pretend to receive a page a moment before detonation to maximize the chance the device is he…

if you physically control the pager I don't even think it's called hacking anymore. you can change the hardware and software willy nilly. put an extra SIM that you control in there, and call it. put a radio receiver. a timer. heck, a dog whistle audio detector, you blow it and they blow up. infinite possibilities.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#476

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#477

Post by system2 »

"Israel managed to hack the portable pagers and cause them to explode" sounds like they uploaded firmware to make the device explode. In fact, it was a supply chain infiltration and they modified the devices with explosives inside. It's weird to call it hack.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#478

Post by briandw »

Let's assume that the battery in the pager is replaced with half C4 half battery. AA battery weighs about 20-25g, so 12.5g C4 total. 12.5g of C4 has roughly 84,000J of energy. For comparison, a 62 grain 5.56 NATO round has about 1,700 J of kinetic energy. The C4 is undirected, so the target is getting a fraction of the impact, but that much C4 detonating near your body is going to do some serious damage.
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