Exploding Hezbollah pagers: how was it done?
The pager network of the Islamic militant organisation Hezbollah has been used as a weapon against it. Nine people were killed and 2,750 injured when a large number of pagers exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon on Tuesday. Hezbollah has accused Israel's intelligence agency Mossad of carrying out the attack. The devices had been purchased only recently because mobile phones were considered too dangerous.
Not magic but HUMINT
Cyber security expert Kostyantyn Korsun looks for answers on censor.net:
“Even the very best cyber experts act exclusively within the laws of physics, chemistry, thermodynamics and technology. What I still don't get is how it was possible to make so many devices explode at the same time, and with such force. The only reasonable explanation would be that somehow explosives were incorporated into the devices of the targeted individuals in advance. ... But how could explosives be built into thousands of the terrorists' devices? This is not magic: this is how traditional HUMINT [human intelligence] methods work – through infiltration by agents.”
Help, my mobile phone can kill me!
Journalist Dmitry Kolesov lists the various versions of what happened in a Telegram post picked up by Echo:
“Israel could have booby-trapped the pagers delivered to Lebanon with explosives. Or Hezbollah had a self-destruction system in the pagers that was remotely activated by Israeli hackers. Or the Israeli hackers were able to heat the batteries of the pagers to the point where they exploded. In my layman's opinion the last scenario seems the least likely, but this version will probably trigger another wave of paranoia worldwide. Just imagine if mobile devices could theoretically turn out to be remote-controlled bombs that can kill or maim their users.”