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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

#661

Post by smoothjazz »

CydeWeys wrote: post #653
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…

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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#662

Post by bbqfog »

CydeWeys wrote: post #653
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…

[flagged]

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#663

Post by elorant »

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...

It surely is because you corrode your target’s trust in technology. They moved from smartphones to pagers, now they’ll have to find even cruder types of communications.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#664

Post by TwentyPosts »

gslepak wrote: post #541
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…

> let’s focus the discussion on the technical aspects of it. The headline chosen here is already biased: "Dozens of _Hezbollah members_ [..]" Anyone following this closely can see that plenty other title choices could be used. There are headlines that would be credibly neutral, headlines that favor the IDF, and headlines that favor Hezbollah. HN is currently choosing to go with a non-neutral, non-technical headline f…

Honestly struggling to comprehend how this one isn't neutral.

As far as we know this was a supply-chain attack specifically on military pagers actively used by Hezbollah, and (right now) it looks like most injured are in fact Hezbollah members (which makes sense, since no one else has any reason to carry such a pager). (With some sad and unfortunate exceptions.)

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#666

Post by drexlspivey »

gmd63 wrote: post #353

Another example of why outsourcing manufacturing is a national security concern, and how the absolute free market can lead "winners" to harm themselves by chasing "success" at all costs.

Doesn't matter, they could have intercepted a shipment and done the same thing

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#667

Post by runjake »

I haven't seen images of the damage, but the difference in damage between an exploding lithium ion battery and 10-15 grams of RDX explosives is going to be "night and day", as they say.

Edit: OK, I've seen some videos. Looks like much less than 10-15g of RDX levels of explosions.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#668

Post by tmnvix »

Aside from the death and injury, what concerns me about this is why now?

There is little doubt in my mind that the Prime Minister of Israel is highly motivated to engage in a wider war and drag the US along.

This mass bombing could well be in preparation for imminent further action - such as an invasion of Lebanon. Regardless, the escalation this represents is extremely concerning.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#669

Post by jjtheblunt »

tptacek wrote: post #171
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?

Who uses pagers? Aid workers carry phones. The pagers are deliberate opsec move for Hezbollah.

not sure of band allocations around israel, but in the US pagers were long wavelength devices and, as such, could receive signals much further inside buildings than pre-wifi cellular bands could reach. again, band / frequency (wavelength) allocation dependent. but if similar there, pagers might get signals in tunnels whereas cellular bands may not, for one plausible conjecture.

Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon

#670

Post by bawolff »

dzonga wrote: post #628
bawolff wrote: post #400

Cant help but be reminded of that james mickens article about the mossad vs not mossad threat model https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf where he joking says that mossad will replace your cellphone with a blick of uranium (as a joke to imply you shouldnt worry about nation state actor type threats when building a stupid web app that nobody cares about, because its impossible)

one of the best things I have read this week. thanks

If you like that, i highly reccomend his talk on ai risks. https://youtu.be/ajGX7odA87k?si=-NMySaJzBdx5wlf2 . Half serious talk half stand up commedy routine.
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