- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
"At least eight people were killed and 2,750 others including Hezbollah fighters, medics and Iran’s envoy to Beirut were wounded on Tuesday when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon, security sources and the Lebanese health minister said…
Lebanese internal security forces said a number of wireless communication devices were detonated across Lebanon, especially in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold. The pagers that detonated were the latest model brought in by Hezbollah in recent months, three security sources said."
Wait, they can explode pagers? I knew it was a good thing we stopped using those! /s
they can hack all sorts of things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7
The hacking isn’t exactly surprising- but what the hell is up with the explosions? Honestly that is the real head-scratcher for me.
They weren’t hacked. A Li-ion battery doesn’t explode like that. It might flash and burn and injure you but those explosions are… explosive in nature. I had read some comments elsewhere saying these pagers were manufactured by some shell company in Taiwan. Idk how true that is but in one way or another, these pagers very likely had actual explosives put in them. It’s way easier to rig up a small explosive to go off at the ring of a certain number then to “hack” it to cause the battery to somehow explode in a way those batteries don’t actually explode.
These pagers don’t even use lithium, they run on normal AAA batteries. There was tampering along the supply chain.
Lithium batteries can be made to explode under the right conditions.
There’s one of two things going on here:
The pagers were perfectly normal off the shelf pagers, maybe with some minor flaw to safety or charging systems but nothing that was intentionally introduced. In this case the zionists found a way to hack the pagers (or potentially cell towers to broadcast something that causes the condition) to induce conditions leading to a battery fire/explosion. I don’t know enough about lithium batteries to say whether it’s suspicious so many of them exploded instead of catching fire though reports say at least some people noticed them getting strangely hot and discarded them which does suggest lithium battery overload.
The zionists knew about their use of pagers and in some way intercepted or replaced shipment of the ones they received with a batch that could be triggered to explode. For plausible deniability I’m guessing it was still a battery explosion rather than micro-explosives but we’ll have to see if any more info comes out.
Either one is problematic for Hezbollah’s communications though at least 2 can be addressed by attempting to do more secure sourcing (e.g. getting Iran to get a direct shipment through an intermediary from a Chinese firm and securing that to be shipped directly to Lebanon). If it’s 1 there’s not much they can do other than do an investigation on exactly how it happened and contact the manufacturers and hope one of them responds by offering a fixed model not vulnerable to this technique.
its going to be #2, that was not a Lithum Ion explosion, the batery would have far more flames and fire
Sorry to say but not great opsec by Hezbollah. I get not opening all of them but they should have opened some at random just to check for the possibility of electronic hardware bugs. Unless it was packed into the lithium cells themselves which might be possible. Heck for all we know they found a way to mix explosive compounds into the lithium itself in a way not visible by physical inspection and only by chemical analysis and perhaps subjecting them to a higher than normal voltage or something triggers the reaction.
Edit I really am going to lean on the idea of either some sort of contaminant introduced into the lithium cells designed to make them more dangerous and likely to explode rather than just burn or some sort of explosive compound mixed in with them that required the battery be overloaded for it to go off.
Either way it’s an act of terrorism.
Personally I suspected it was something along those lines (of either #1 or #2). But the concept of #1 in particular is a certain kind of terroristic horror (that is exactly in character for the Isntrealis and the west in general) that would be concerning to learn of, if they have developed such a method. Both possibilities are horrifying, that said.
Whatever it is, admittedly- I hope that the end result is that the resistance (and the world at large) works to address these vulnerabilities, and that the process is reverse engineered or replicated in turn.
This type of thing will absolutely, undoubtedly boomerang back to the imperial core. And when it does all the libbies who shrugged at the genocide and ignored our warnings that the violence will end up blowing back at them will just move the goalposts again. I hope other enemies of the state are observing all of this and triple-checking their supply chains.
I saw footage of one explosion and it was pretty powerful. I’ve seen lithium batteries explode before and they seem way less violent. Guess they’re chunky (and cheap?) batteries
Yes, I’m curious as well as to how this exploit happened. Supply chain contamination? An extremely specific firmware vulnerability that was discovered via research and saved for later? Keep in mind that the mossad helped make Pegasus w/ the NSA so they likely have all sorts of sinister APTs to terrorize us with.
Most likely hijacked a shipment and replaced it with bombs.
It seems like this is the answer. The shipment that came in 5 months ago was contaminated with the explosive, which was detonated when the hack turned the temperature of the device up to the ignition point.