this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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Damn. This must be one of the most terrifying cyber attacks of all time. Like, Mr. Robot level of breach and execution.
In that show they rig the UPS batteries of server buildings to blow up, this is basically the same idea on a smaller scale.
Either that, or they compromised the manufacturer of the pagers and put small explosive devices in there. Truly legendary and insane.
Its stuxnet like
no way it was just the batteries.
batteries burn but don't detonate with shrapnel
it was altered devices with explosives added.
Yeah they got into the supply route and added c4 to all those pagers. Makes me wonder how many pagers or smartphones have added explosives still.
Shrapnel, no, but Lithium-Ion does explode. Especially on a full charge
As someone who's accidentally punctured a large lithium ion battery with 100% charge I can tell you that explode isn't exactly the right word. While I'm sure you could create an enclosure that could explode from the pressure, the battery itself just kinda shoots out a small jet of fire along with some toxic gas.
No way did lithium batteries kill eight people.
I did not say they did, but they can explode violently
https://youtu.be/8nz5ijXcckI
Cool video. But that looks like what I expected. The videos of the pagers are small direct explosions and not really the heavy flame and smoke of the videos.
That powerbank in the bus.. whoa.. and those guys with the ebike in the elevator.. stuff of nightmares.
Yeah, being trapped in a lift with a burning Ebike battery sounds like not much fun at all.
They have over-pressure vents and will vent pretty violently and catch fire, but should not explode due to pressure build up.
They still explode in some cases. Plenty of clips of li-ion not just catching fire but exploding similar to how a firework might explode.
https://youtu.be/8nz5ijXcckI
Probably not. It was almost certainly the case that these pagers were already connected to explosives, probably to be IEDs. All Israel would have had to do is page the pagers to detonate them. I can’t think of any other logical explanation.
I don't think the thousands of pagers built this way really count as "improvised."
That being said, it makes me wonder if this went in any way according to plan - 8 deaths and 2750 injuries is a large scale attack, don't get me wrong. But they've now announced Mossad has compromised the supplier of the pager, which they will undoubtedly audit, and instill new policies on device security. I wouldn't be surprised if that means they discover a lot more compromised electronics, allowing Hezbollah to pinpoint the compromise. Because 2750 survived, you now have 2750 people very interested in finding it.
In all, for 8 deaths, they've made their own work harder.
That being said 2750 injuries could be a large enough number to scare members out of the org.
I heard they recently switched to pagers because cell phones where deemed to be compromised. So I think besides the direct deaths and injuries, this attack also targeted lines of communication and trust in technology as a whole (or anything supplied by your superior even).
Exactly. The psychological impact of this attack should not be underestimated.
It will have Hamas' leadership and operatives second guessing so many of the mundane things that they interact with on a daily basis.
Im more surprised that Hezbollah issues them. I'd thought pagers were cheap enough as consumer items that they'd just give their guy a wad of cash and say go pick up such and such pager for me.
Would have at least severely hampered any precision from man-in-the-middle attacks on supply lines such as these. Especially when being embedded within a civilian city.
Yeah, that's what I read too. It's a smart way to force the weaponized pagers into the hands of your enemies.
Also sort of shows the attack wasn't too sophisticated. Mossad might not even have compromised the cell phones, they just fed bad intelligence to whoever and they had a likely supplier already compromised.
In all - it doesn't look too good for any intelligence personnel in Hezbollah.
If those pagers had explosives, I wonder if the explosives were put there as a sabotage or for "destroy if found" functionality
Perhaps the latter? My first thought is still that the pagers intended use was for triggering explosives, and they were simply triggered early by the other side.
You would not put it inside the pager if you want to use it as a trigger. You would also not ready-make thousands of those and let thousands of people carry them around.
Yeah, I've been wondering how the fuck they pulled this off. If it turns out that the only pagers that exploded belonged to Hezbollah members, then that would signal to me that this was done entirely digitally.
I've heard that batteries (can't remember if it was laptop or phone batteries) contain the energy of a small grenade, but getting it to release that energy all at once without physical access is absolutely fucking wild and has serious fucking implications for device security.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-explosives-hezbollahs-taiwan-made-pagers-sources-say-2024-09-18/
I'll save you time. Licensed factory in Europe, making Chinese beepers, was compromised or owned by Israel. They then put explosives in the pagers and set them to explode when paged a certain code.
They knew hezbollah was the purchaser, and would disperse them amongst its members.
I think its stupid unless it stopped some imminent horrible attack. Otherwise, Israel has given themselves away, and only killed 8 people for it. Maybe they had trouble rigging them to steal their communications.
It wasn't "stupid". As a psy-op, it further complicates Hezbollah's communications, sows fear among Hezbollah members, demonstrates Israel's far-reaching capabilities, makes civilians suspicious of Hezbollah officials, etc. If Israel does something similar a couple more times, Hezbollah will have to resort to bicycle couriers and smoke signals.
It also undermines Hezbollah's credibility. The Lebanese people are not stupid. They know that Hezbollah is a shadow government allowing Iran to control Lebanon and use it as a staging ground for attacks on Israel. That leaves Lebanon in a permanent state of semi-war with Israel, not to mention its involvement in multiple other external conflicts. None of which is helpful for the health and prosperity of Lebanon.
Lebanon is a natural trading nation and always has been. It is a beautiful country full of kind people with excellent commercial instincts. They are held down as a nation by the fact that Hezbollah has turned the country into a pawn of the Ayatollah.
Thats a fair opinion, although I think its likely to cause the opposite reactions than you listed. But again, who really knows.
Also I'm sure most people in most places are good people, just like anywhere, Lebanon included.
Good point. I should have qualified what I said by saying that the Israeli operation may have the effects I listed. But, as you say, it might backfire and have the opposite of the intended effect. I guess that is always a risk with these types of operations.
Getting batteries to release energy isn't very difficult, even getting them to release it quickly isn't very difficult. What's difficult is getting them to release it over the course of a few milliseconds. Which is what you would need for an explosion.
If the battery simply dumped all its power over the course of 30 seconds that's basically just a fire that you can run away from.
Also I wouldn't have thought a pager had that much charge, I wouldn't have thought this sort of thing would be possible as they would tend to just go off with a loud bang, assuming you could even get them to release all the energy at once l, which again I wouldn't have thought was possible.
For fairly obvious reasons I don't think we're ever going to find out how this was done.
Maybe there will be a faulty one laying somwhere now thrown away by the owner? That will be nice for analysis.
More like stuxnet level !
I am surprised the name of the manufacture is not out. This basically raise privacy concern.
cyber attack ? Lol
That will give a lot of idea to other people maybe soon having a phone on you will be a big risk
They've done a similar thing at a smaller scale with individual phones in the past. What is different is this time it's not targeted at a specific person and instead involves thousands of devices going off simultaneously. It's not a big risk unless you have nation state level threats up against you because it's hard to pull off, they have to get a functioning device with explosives in it into the hands of the target and the effort involved in doing that is significant.
and now Hezbollah will be frightened to touch anything at all