Israel Put Explosives in Pagers Sold to Hezbollah. After Axios Rumors Comes Confirmation from New York TimesThe explosive was reportedly placed near the battery of pager with a switch and activated via text message. This is a joint operation of the Mossad and the army. Most of the devices were of the AR924 model. Hezbollah was branded by the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo. But they were produced in Europe by a licensee. The batch included 3,000 devices. The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding. Thus the hypothesis of hacking behind the explosions collapses. And according to experts, this is a technique that can also be used for mobile phones.
It remains to be understood how the pagers were sabotaged. Some hypotheses are on the table. The first is that a shipment of AR924 pagers was intercepted and armed. The second, which however assumes hacking, is that the Israeli forces' computer scientists overheated the devices' lithium batteries, causing the explosion. But the damage caused is too great for this hypothesis: to date, there have been 11 deaths (including a 9-year-old girl) and 4,000 injured. Certainly, some witnesses speak of a beep heard before the explosions: that is to say, the acoustic signal of the pagers. Moreover, some are said to have escaped by getting rid of them before the explosion. However, seven members of Hezbollah lost their lives in the Seyedah Zenab district of Damascus. While the purchase is said to have gone through unspecified Egyptian intermediaries. On this occasion, the explosive was placed.
The Middlemen and the Mossad
Hezbollah is banking on the intermediaries and their links with the Mossad. “It is not excluded that this could be a 'shaping operation'. It is the first act of a larger operation that involves the penetration of Tsahal into Lebanese territory,” he said. The press Mr. Magnano, an analyst in the field of international security. “It is certainly not an easy operation, but without a doubt what has been done is already revolutionary.” To the point that “the chain of command and control of Hezbollah is twisted,” Lebanese sources explain, revealing a gap that will have repercussions on the entire security apparatus of the organization. There are also precedents.
The precedents
Mahmud Hamshari, the Palestine Liberation Organization representative in France, was killed by the detonation of his telephone because he was held responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. A Mossad agent posing as a journalist had planted the explosive. Yahya Abd al Latif Ayyash, known as an engineer and member of Hamas, also died in 1996. He was responsible, according to the Mossad, for refining the technique of suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Israel. On January 5, a charge of Rdx (nitroamine) was placed on his mobile phone and detonated by remote control. Al Jazeera television speculated that the sabotage had taken place in Iran. This would be a new setback for Hezbollah.
The experts
Orna Mizrachi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, says that “the simultaneous explosion of all the pagers certainly represents an unusual action that shows great organizational capacity. It is a success for those who organized it and a failure for Hezbollah, which was hit in the heart.” On the dynamics: “I believe that this was an action that had been planned and organized for some time, an action was carried out somewhere in the supply chain of these devices, which arrived from Taiwan, to insert an explosive inside. Sending a message on all the pagers meant the accusation.” On the National newspaper Stefano Zanero, professor of computer security at the Politecnico di Milano, explains that the idea of malware or hacking is not very credible. And this confirms the thesis of the quantity of explosives placed in the pagers.
Supply Chain Attack
According to Zanero, it was a supply chain attacks: “We don't know how it got there, although we can guess who put it there. The most credible hypothesis is what can be called a “supply chain attack”. In other words, in the supply chain of these devices that were supposedly replaced a few months ago by more powerful models, someone managed to place explosives there. Small quantities of powerful explosives are enough, with a “shaped” charge, designed to concentrate the shock wave in one direction. The Israelis have already done this on some mobile phones in the past. Of course, on this scale, if it happened like this, it is an absolute first.” The charge was apparently activated “via network communication”.
Risks to Cell Phones
Paolo Del Checco, a forensic computer consultant, explains to Corriere della Sera that “lithium batteries in mobile phones, but also in household appliances, as well as in scooters and electric cars, are certainly prone to fires but are not likely to explode in a disruptive manner.” That our smartphones could explode remotely therefore seems very unlikely, if not almost impossible, unless they have been designed to do so by inserting an explosive charge.” Batteries can overheat and explode, but the damage – the reasoning goes – in these cases is much less. While other attacks can target the functionality of to wipei.e. restore the phone to its factory state with all content deleted.
The other hypothesis
Another hypothesis, the expert explains, is that “the pagers were equipped with an explosive charge such that they could self-destruct if lost or stolen, also injuring the potential thief. In this way, a sort of “remote erasure” would be obtained not only of the data, but also of the device itself. With two possible alternatives. A setting that can be managed by users, just like a sort of “remote blast” to use when needed. Or a feature that users were unaware of. But it is also possible that neither those who bought the pager nor those who distributed it were aware of its advanced features. And then we could delve into true 007 territory by assuming that this feature was designed to specifically target specific users. “
Gold Apollo and Hezbollah pagers: “Made in Europe”
Gold Apollo did not produce the pagers used by Hezbollah militants that exploded simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria yesterday, killing about 20 people and wounding about 4,000, according to the Taiwanese company's founder Hsu Ching-Kuang, who said the devices were made by a European company that had the right to use the Gold Apollo brand. “The product was not ours. It had our brand,” Hsu said, according to local media, without specifying the name of the European company that made them. “Gold Apollo was the victim of the accident, we are a responsible company and what happened is very embarrassing,” Hsu added. Hezbollah fighters began using pagers, believing that they could evade Israeli tracking of their location if they knew about the group's operations.
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