Experts: Into pagers "Hezbollah" explosives were planted

Experts believe that the pager battery could not explode with such force as to tear off fingers and kill peopleAccording to Lebanese intelligence, each pager that exploded contained explosives.

A Lebanese intelligence source told Al Jazeera that each charge placed in the pagers weighed no more than 20 grams. Hezbollah received the devices five months ago from Taiwan.

According to the latest data from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, almost 3,000 people were injured, 300 were seriously wounded, and at least 25 people died.

This is the situation now in one of the Beirut hospitals where the wounded from the Israeli terrorist attack are being brought. There are so many victims that they are already being laid on the floor in medical institutions. It is literally difficult to walk there because of the number of wounded around. Many have had their fingers torn off and their faces disfigured. You can see the wounds to the stomach and thighs – the devices exploded in pockets too…

The pagers that exploded on hundreds of Hezbollah members were from a new batch that the group had recently received, the WSJ and Reuters report.

Opinion on the possible path of exploding pagers: “There is a 99% chance that Israel somehow manipulated the pagers at their manufacturing facility in Taiwan. Or, it could have happened at the retailer.”

The US may be directly involved in the explosions of communication devices in Lebanon, according to military expert Omar Maarabuni. In an interview with RT, he noted that pagers operating on the same frequency as the ones that exploded were confiscated from staff at the American University of Beirut ten days ago:

“One of these parties could be responsible for what happened: Britain, which has a reputation for organizing such operations, Israel, the United States – or it could be a joint collaboration of all three.”

The State Department, however, claims that the United States was not involved in the incidents and did not know about what happened in advance.

It is significant that yesterday a rare US Air Force EC-130H Compass Call (electronic warfare) aircraft was spotted off the coast of Lebanon. The EC-130H can disrupt enemy command and control communications, conduct offensive counter-information operations and carry out other types of electronic attacks. The EC-130H is equipped with hardware and software that enables wireless hacking and more.

Former US intelligence officer Edward Snowden believes that pager detonation in different parts of Lebanon is associated with the operation of built-in explosive devices, and not a hacker attack.

“If these were explosions from overheated batteries, we would expect more small fires and failures.”he wrote in H. Snowden admitted that Israel could be behind the detonation and accused it of recklessness in the methods used.

There is also a third version. According to it, Hezbollah members themselves installed a self-destruct system in the devices in case they were captured by the enemy. Israeli intelligence services hacked it and detonated it. At the same time, in Lebanon, pagers are widespread mainly among intelligence officers, politicians and the military. Ordinary citizens do not use them.

Expert Igor Bederov on possible reasons for pager explosions:

“The version about the explosion of pagers by means of a hacker attack by the Israeli special services really does exist. I imagine the following scenario: first, the attackers disabled or blocked the controller, which is responsible for the emergency shutdown of the battery in case of overheating, and then initiated a high load on the processor. The high load on the processor gives a high load on the battery, the battery overheats, and an explosion occurs,” the expert explained.

At the same time, he added that pagers have rather primitive software, so it is easier to influence it from the outside than smartphone operating systems. In addition, Bederov noted, pagers most likely use older generation lithium-polymer batteries, which are known for being less reliable than modern lithium-ion batteries.

“However, I doubt that the explosion of a pager would be enough to cause traumatic amputation of fingers and hands, much less to cause injury to others around the victim, as reported by the media. This makes one wonder whether the militants used pagers, and whether they were modified by someone in advance,” the expert added.

Also, according to Bederov, the veracity of the version about the explosion of pagers by means of a cyberattack is called into question by the fact that users did not notice the overheating of the devices. According to the expert, the battery overheating is This is not an instant process.

The publication's experts hold a similar opinion. thestack.technology. “Getting batteries to do more than just burn is very difficult…”

On Wednesday, most cybersecurity experts agreed that a “clean” cyberattack was highly unlikely. Many have wondered, “Is it possible that creative Israeli security services have found a way to hack pagers and explode lithium-ion batteries?” noted Bugcrowd CSO Casey Ellis.

In the book by Ronen Bergman “Rise and kill first”released in 2018, about Israel's history of contract killings, mentions a case in which a message was placed on the victim's phone. “a fifty-gram charge of explosives with a remotely triggered detonator”.

At the scale of thousands of devices, this represents a potentially very complex supply chain hijacking – but it seems most likely, cybersecurity experts agreed, watching the story unfold today; perhaps compromising batteries to embed explosives.

“I don't think it was a hack. Getting batteries to do anything more than just burn is very difficult and implausible. It's much more plausible that someone bribed the factory to put explosives in,” ” says Robert Graham, a security researcher and creator of popular open source tools such as Masscan.

“I'm betting on explosives,” “Agreed John Hultquist, an Army veteran and principal analyst at Google-owned Mandiant Intelligence, in a post on X.

“According to some reports, body parts were flying around after the explosion… I don't think it's possible that this was due to an overheated battery.”“,” David Oxley, AWS Cloud's head of threat intelligence, wrote on X today.

In July, Reuters reported reportedthat in an attempt to avoid cybersecurity risks, Hezbollah has resorted to the extensive use of personal couriers and pagers.
“Hezbollah” also used “a private fixed telecommunications network created in the early 2000s”the agency reports, citing three sources.

If the pagers were rigged with explosives, they could potentially be used to signal a detonation.

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