Imagine what they could do with the battery in an electric car..
thankfully the security on vehicles is so good that a hack like this would be impossible eh?
Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#742here is how they did it (supposedly): https://x.com/Osint613/status/1836111109742354507
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I don't know the density of PETN and I'd prefer not to fire up a VPN to run that search at the moment, but let's assume it's something like 1.5 g/cm³
So 20 grams of the stuff would occupy 13.3 cm³
Which is equivalent to the volume of about three and a half AAA batteries.
How big are these pagers, and how can there be that much empty space in one?
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#743"The New York Times reported that Israel hid explosive material in the Taiwan-made Gold Apollo pagers before they were imported to Lebanon, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation. The material was implanted next to the battery with a switch that could be triggered remotely to detonate." Wild
That is pretty similar to what has been guessed so far. The posters here speculated that the charge was concealed inside the battery. Also some reports said that the batteries themselves heated up triggering the explosives. does the report mention if this was a physical switch or just some sort of control circuit?
The majority of plastic based high explosives are designed to be very stable, and require both heat and pressure to detonate, so my educated guess is they implanted something along the lines of a blasting cap into the pagers. I’ve seen PETN mentioned, but again, that is designed to be stable.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#744Maybe a dumb question, but I wonder if this was a software attack or IL was able to modify the physical pagers that are issued during Hezbollah onboarding. If this was a pure software attack, are only pagers susceptible? Or are we unknowingly carrying around bombs in our pocket, waiting for the counterattack?
If you put yourself in the position of Hezbollah's IT chief, you get a different picture than this question assumes.
Let's assume you're somewhat competent and aware of supply chain vulnerabilities.
Let's also assume that pagers are not that popular anymore, and you insist on a pager that's completely passive. It can't emit any signals at all, or the Mossad would track it.
So you probably find some supplier of gear to the Iranians and other non-Western countries, and give them your specifications. That supplier is reliable, you think. It probably listens to a signal that Hez and only Hez transmits. It's Security By Obscurity, the choice of naive buyers everywhere.
You certainly don't buy anything off the shelf. Well, we know what's wrong with Security By Obscurity: Mossad only has to decipher one secret.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#745From 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…
Israel's economy is already in the toilet due to them becoming an International pariah because of the ongoing genocide - this will just make it worse
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#746From 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…
A 10 year old girl died too. They took no precautions to limit damage bystanders even assuming every person with one was a BadGuy™ which makes it terrorism and reprehensible.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#747"The New York Times reported that Israel hid explosive material in the Taiwan-made Gold Apollo pagers before they were imported to Lebanon, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation. The material was implanted next to the battery with a switch that could be triggered remotely to detonate." Wild
>citing American and other officials briefed on the operation.
How far should I be reading into the fact that people outside of Israel leaked this info so quickly? Does it mean the US was very unhappy with the attack? I doubt they were happy with not being given a heads up.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#748Amir Tsarfati on Telegram: The updated numbers: 4000 wounded of which 400 in critical conditions Al Jazeera from a Lebanese security source: The pagers were brought to Lebanon 5 months ago. They were boobytrapped in advance. Each device contained an explosive weighing no more than 20 grams.
20 grams that's wild. You could only produce these kinds of effects from a 'military grade' explosive like CL-20 or similar.
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Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#749Seems 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...
it does seem like a purely escalatory move. wounding but not killing 1000+ of your deepest adversaries, slow clap... I'm sure Hezbollah will give up now that their pagers are destroyed.
Re: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon
#750From 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…
Right now one of the fastest growing companies is the Israel cybersecurity company Wiz, founded by founders and investors from Israel's Unit 8200, their secretive cyber hacking group. Seems to me a massive security risk for any US company to be relying on critical security to a non American founded companies.
I created a throwaway account just for this.
I actually hired, and we later fired, a couple of 'engineers' from Unit 8200. They were technically quite weak, and when Oct. 7 happened, I wasn't surprised at all. If this was the cream of the crop, the defense community should seriously re-evaluate the efficacy of the IDF.