if there’s anything Israelis are good at is selling faulty electronics to strangers
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i’m favouring the small explosive device hidden in a redundant say capacitor theory. more likely supply line sabotage. Lithium bttery fires are like roman candle fireworks - these ‘fires’ (explosions) were more than intense fires
The mass sabotage of such a large number of Lebanese pagers required both timely intelligence and technical capability.
Since the start of the Gaza conflict last year, Hezbollah had warned its members not to use mobile phones for fear they could be tampered with by Israeli intelligence agents.
Back in 1996, Israel’s Shin Bet agency assassinated a Hamas bombmaker with explosives in his phone.
Instead, Hezbollah were using pagers to communicate, with a new batch delivered recently.
Somebody - and Hezbollah are in no doubt that Israel was behind this - was able to secretly insert themselves into the supply chain for those pagers.
A former British Army munitions expert, who asked not to be named, told the BBC the devices would have likely been packed with between 10 to 20 grams each of military-grade high explosive, hidden inside a fake electronic component.
This, said the expert, would have been armed by a signal, something called an alphanumeric text message.
Once armed, the next person to use the device would have triggered the explosive. Less than 1% of the exploding pagers have so far proved fatal, but with hundreds seriously injured this is a major psychological blow to Hezbollah.
Some suggested a hack may have caused the pager batteries to overheat, causing the devices to explode. Such an act would be unprecedented.
But many experts say that is unlikely, with footage of the explosions inconsistent with the batteries overheating.
news is definitely wild, most war commentators are in awe right now, although not everyone buys the explosive narrative. a few claimed that hezbollah probably started using pagers with a self-destruct function, because operational security i sthat important. the charge didn’t become lethal in big majority of explosions, and ended up targeting mostly individuals connected to distribution of this particular device.
mossad or whoever probably found the cyberattack vector anyway, but it might make more likely sense than pulling off a supply chain hack through middlemen in the region. e.g, one of the thousands of pagers could have overheated and exploded accidentally, and the whole scheme might have been discovered.
Self-destruct pager that can be deadly sounds very dumb.
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I often hear “jokes” that are “funny” that I’d never repeat. Because … its mechanical. The structure is there, but the content is disgusting.
Same here. “Brilliant” but also war and hate and awfulness.
It makes me wonder (and I’m certain, the Iranians/Lebanese/Hamas/Hezbollah also) just how deeply Mossad has penetrated their organizations.
They get word that they want to use pagers for OpSec reasons…
So they insert themselves into the supply chain and equip them with thousands of exploding pagers.
Crazy and incredible tradecraft.
I’m sure that’s no comfort to the dead, innocent collateral damage there must surely have been.
It’s clear that if Israel thinks they can definitely kill some bad guys, and the cost is some collateral damage, then they’re okay with that calculation.
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Suppy chain attacks are a huge fear today – across probably everything; my ony real knowledge is the power grid and it’s a huge concern.
the seeming lack of any larger plan from Israel and the timing (just as Bibi is trying to fire Gallant, his minister of defense) make me believe that detonating the pagers now is likely because Mossad were scared their plan is compromised.
Straight out of a GTA 5 mission JFC.
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Are their 4000 pager carrying Hamas members? That seems like a lot of people to keep communications secure.
I was thinking the same thing. Doing this outside of the context of a larger operation is crazy to me.
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Yeah this. As impressive as the operation itself may be, that’s really completely irrelevant if it wasn’t part of a larger strategy.
I don’t expect much from Bibi et al beyond “lol we killin’ baddies brbrbrbrbr” though.
reports of more electronics exploding in Lebanon
This is the pager:
Pretty big actually, and the supposed waterproofness might explain why no-one at Hezbollah thought of having a look inside; you don’t want to void the warranty!