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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

#651

Post by rolux »

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…

> In the short term, it's a smart strategy for Israel, but they've likely opened Pandora's box in the process.

Absolutely. From today on, this type of attack will have to be considered part of the arsenal.

While building thousands of explosive communication devices and swapping a large shipment requires substantial resources and intelligence, the actual "sophistication" of today's attack seems to lie in the fact that the perpetrator managed to specifically target a clandestine adversarial organization.

If you don't care about that last part, I don't think it's completely out of reach for a hypothetical "state sponsored terrorist organization" to have a thousand smart phone explosives shipped into a target market, say the European Union or the United States. Such an attack, if successful, would be devastating.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#652

Post by talldayo »

ilikeitdark wrote: post #646

Question: what's the possibility of doing this with non-tampered with modern mobile phones? Many phones today have a 5000mah battery, which I'm assuming could be triggered to overheat via a malicious app or webpage. Imagine this being used on a grand scale.

It's not easy. Lithium-ion batteries are designed to withstand heat without presenting an immediate or non-obvious threat to the user. The easiest way to cause a pyrotechnic discharge is to penetrate the battery itself, and even that isn't terribly explosive (here's a laptop battery "exploding": https://youtu.be/oieH2wwDGzo )

If someone did try heating up your phone to implement such an attack, you would feel it burning through your denim pockets long before it hits 210f. Futhermore, both phone SOCs and battery firmwares tend to implement emergency shutoff contingencies for when the phone overheats. Without prior tampering, nothing will really behave like it does in this attack. It is 100% a supply-chain threat.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#653

Post by CydeWeys »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #537

They must really be in desperate need for more conflict to keep their population at bay. For Netanyahu certainly conflicts come at a convenient time. First he tried to swing himself up to dictator like figure, taking away power from judiciary, tens of thousands of people go to protest. Then October 7 happens. Suddenly a war keeps him in power. Now that that has been going on, and hundreds of thousands are on the stre…

You're forgetting that tens of thousands of Israelis from the north of Israel have been homeless and internally displaced since shortly after October 7th when Hezbollah started indiscriminately targeting Israeli residential neighborhoods in North Israel with rockets, artillery, and ATGMs, killing several civilians. This is not a tenable state of affairs, not militarily, nor politically. Israel is going to address it one way or another, one day or another, and perhaps they're starting now.

So in one sense you're right that it's to keep their population at bay -- because their population is absolutely fed up with the situation in North Israel and how people have been homeless for nearly a year now and a huge swath of the northern part of the country, will billions of dollars in real estate in total, is uninhabitable. And if this government can't provide security for its citizens, which is the most important thing a government can do by the way, then it will be replaced with one that can.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#656

Post by robot_no_421 »

rsync wrote: post #224
csomar wrote: post #119

Can we have this thread back and make it strictly technical?

No. The discussion should meander in any direction the votes and scoring allow it to. If the voting supports it, it is on topic ipso facto .

Not at all, that's why we have moderators. Hacker news is interesting because they stay focused on the right topics. If you let people just talk about whatever they want, you're just gonna get an inferior Reddit. Topic != "Whatever we want to talk about", the topic is very often the technical and technological aspects of a story or article. Talking about politics on HN is definitely "off topic".

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#657

Post by moffkalast »

ilikeitdark wrote: post #646

Question: what's the possibility of doing this with non-tampered with modern mobile phones? Many phones today have a 5000mah battery, which I'm assuming could be triggered to overheat via a malicious app or webpage. Imagine this being used on a grand scale.

I seriously doubt there is any way at all for software to trigger a dead short, and even if you did, the path would burn out quickly and the hardware only BMS part would cut power due to the massive voltage drop.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#658

Post by cebu_blue »

ilikeitdark wrote: post #646

Question: what's the possibility of doing this with non-tampered with modern mobile phones? Many phones today have a 5000mah battery, which I'm assuming could be triggered to overheat via a malicious app or webpage. Imagine this being used on a grand scale.

OK you just have to prevent it on OS level tbab. So the battery temperature doesn't go higher than a certain level.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#659

Post by tavavex »

LinuxBender wrote: post #38
HarryHirsch wrote: post #13

This hack is the best argument against network-connected electric vehicles that there is. Imagine the same, but with tens of thousands of Teslas.

I don't think it would be quite the same as in explosive ordinance put into a device but it is very similar in that a mass hack could use the navigation system to target pedestrians and calculate the speed required to plow through them without losing control to maximize victim count. All that would be required in another remote hack as has been demonstrated on live highways in the past [1] combined with some form of…

> maybe drive by wire car manufacturers could start adding a "oh crap" manual handle to physically disengage power and apply some type of physical friction brake

It depends on the manufacturer, but I think this is already the case with Tesla cars? The brake specifically isn't drive-by-wire, it's an electrically assisted hydraulic brake - so even if a malicious actor could get the car to not do the assist part anymore, you can still stop by pressing the pedal hard.

I feel like bollards and other form of separating roads from pedestrians are unviable on the large scale. I hope manufacturers start focusing more on sandboxing any internet-connected parts of their software and leaving the whole car-driving part inaccessible from any of that.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#660

Post by ridgeguy »

These were detonations, not batteries gone wild. A few grams of common explosives like PETN could have been dabbed to look like a small component in a pager. An exploding bridge wire (EBW) detonator can be blown by a charge pumped array of small low voltage capacitors charged in parallel, then switched to discharge in series. No booster needed.
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