Damn. This must be one of the most terrifying cyber attacks of all time. Like, Mr. Robot level of breach and execution.
In that show they rig the UPS batteries of server buildings to blow up, this is basically the same idea on a smaller scale.
Either that, or they compromised the manufacturer of the pagers and put small explosive devices in there. Truly legendary and insane.
no way it was just the batteries.
batteries burn but don’t detonate with shrapnel
it was altered devices with explosives added.
Yeah they got into the supply route and added c4 to all those pagers. Makes me wonder how many pagers or smartphones have added explosives still.
There are several reports that the devices were made with the explosives built-in.
According to the spokesperson of the Taiwanese brand in a press conference, those were all devices produced by a Hungarian licensee of the brand.
Hungary, you know, been voting with Israel in the UN and also has a Fascist government which is massivelly racist against Arabs.
Kind makes sense that those things were manufactured in a country very friendly of Israel and with their authorization, already with the explosis built-in.
The interesting second and third level effects to consider of this are around the impact on things like Globalization (if having to start paying attention to the alliances of the countries the stuff you buy comes from the places which are part of a supply chain stop being irrelevant) and even brand licensing (that Taiwanese company will have their name pop-up associated with this in every single internet search from now on)
Also curious about what will this to to “Made in EU” - Hungary might just have screwed the rest of us much more than ever before.
Shrapnel, no, but Lithium-Ion does explode. Especially on a full charge
No way did lithium batteries kill eight people.
I did not say they did, but they can explode violently
Cool video. But that looks like what I expected. The videos of the pagers are small direct explosions and not really the heavy flame and smoke of the videos.
That powerbank in the bus… whoa… and those guys with the ebike in the elevator… stuff of nightmares.
Yeah, being trapped in a lift with a burning Ebike battery sounds like not much fun at all.
As someone who’s accidentally punctured a large lithium ion battery with 100% charge I can tell you that explode isn’t exactly the right word. While I’m sure you could create an enclosure that could explode from the pressure, the battery itself just kinda shoots out a small jet of fire along with some toxic gas.
Probably not. It was almost certainly the case that these pagers were already connected to explosives, probably to be IEDs. All Israel would have had to do is page the pagers to detonate them. I can’t think of any other logical explanation.
I don’t think the thousands of pagers built this way really count as “improvised.”
That being said, it makes me wonder if this went in any way according to plan - 8 deaths and 2750 injuries is a large scale attack, don’t get me wrong. But they’ve now announced Mossad has compromised the supplier of the pager, which they will undoubtedly audit, and instill new policies on device security. I wouldn’t be surprised if that means they discover a lot more compromised electronics, allowing Hezbollah to pinpoint the compromise. Because 2750 survived, you now have 2750 people very interested in finding it.
In all, for 8 deaths, they’ve made their own work harder.
That being said 2750 injuries could be a large enough number to scare members out of the org.
If those pagers had explosives, I wonder if the explosives were put there as a sabotage or for “destroy if found” functionality
Perhaps the latter? My first thought is still that the pagers intended use was for triggering explosives, and they were simply triggered early by the other side.
You would not put it inside the pager if you want to use it as a trigger. You would also not ready-make thousands of those and let thousands of people carry them around.
I am surprised the name of the manufacture is not out. This basically raise privacy concern.
They were on TV over here (Portugal) doing a press conference were they explained the devices were made in Hungary by a company which licensed the brand name from them (a Taiwanese company) so the manufacturer’s name (which I totally forgot) is definitely out.
Its stuxnet like
cyber attack ? Lol
None dare call it Terrorism.
Why is it okay for them to bomb Lebanon as well?
Because Arab lives have no value in Israeli society.
Because Arab lives have no value in
Israeliwestern society.FTFY.
To be fair, Jewish lives also only matters to the west if they are busy murdering brown people.
It depends on the Western country - some are much worse than others when it comes to the whole practice of defining people’s worth mainly from their race.
Some Western nations (maybe most of them in Europe) do tend to see value in all human live, Arab or otherwise, but many to indeed see no value in Arab life.
If I was to point a finger at the worst in Europe I would say Britain, Hungary, Austria and Germany.
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims.
While it’s likely there were civilians hurt by this, the target was undeniably Hesbollah. So no, not terrorism.
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Israel is a terrorist organization. Radical, fundamentalist Jewish terrorism.
Stunning that you’re being downvoted. This was a brilliant attack on a group that actually attacks Israel actually indiscriminately on the daily.
National order isnt based on tit for tat. If someone commits a war crime against you it doesnt mean you get to do it too.
In my opinion the time of day they chose to blow them shows they wanted as much collateral damage as they could.
What’s the advantage of making excuses for committing war crimes?
Is there any time of day it’s not atrocious? Seems like any time would have basically equal risk for collateral casualties.
To be effective it all had to be at once. It seems that they waited until the pagers were being used to coordinate a fresh wave of rocket attacks with promises of more to come before setting them off.
Is there any time of day it’s not atrocious? Seems like any time would have basically equal risk for collateral casualties.
Then maybe it shouldn’t be done at all.
Maybe nobody should fight wars ever. Grow up.
Maybe all an army has to do to take over the entire world is bring their families to the front. Can’t shoot back at them because their families are there. So they pretty much win every engagement. Problem solved. No more wars.
And you are saying noone is allowed to fight on their own land, as it endangers the public.
Because that time of day is when the most people will be out in public. It seems deliberately designed to cause as much damage as widely as possible. Likely to cause fear in the population.
They put explosives in the pagers but no shrapnel, so how does your conclusion make sense? If Israel wanted to simply cause mass damage, this would be a most incompetent way to do it.
They wanted to cause fear, which is terrorism.
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There you go conflating Jews and Israel. Apart from that you have an arguable point.
Israelis and cops just doesn’t sound as snappy.
Bibi really wants a war with Hezbollah, doesn’t he? I mean you can’t call it defending Israels safety anymore when you provoke any and all responses every other month with a missile here, a bomb there and now thousands of bombs everywhere. This is just another measure to keep Netanyahu in a conflict so that he doesn’t have to bear the consequences of multiple corruption cases against him and the dissolving of his coalition outside unity cases in a war. Why is Europe and the US still covering for him? What is the rest of Israel doing?
During the last month there were not 1, not 10, not 100 but 807 alerts in Israel for missile attacks. Some of them weren’t fired by Hezbollah, and some might have been the same alert in different areas, but that’s still about 7 missile PER DAY even if we assume only 1 in 4 alerts was due to an attack by Hezbollah (side note: during the entire war, about 2,000 missile were launched from Lebanon to Israel, that’s an average of about 6 per day). In addition to this, there were 452 aircraft intrusion alerts. Most of these attacks are against civilian targets.
Right now, there are about 79 thousand people (around 0.8% of total population) who are still evicted for nearly a year from northern Israel.
And just in case it needs to be said - the first attack was made by Hezbollah (on Oct. 8th) and without any provocation by Israel.
Not only is this a situation no sovereign country can stand, but it’s also a violation of the Lebanon-approved UN Security Council’s resolution 1701, that was the basis for ending the 2006 Lebanon War. Hell, just having missiles in the area is by itself a violation of the resolution.
Regarding political reasoning - A war in Lebanon is actually bad for Netanyahu. His interest is a slow-burning war so he can prolong the current situation as much as possible (once the war is over, the pubic will demand an election). In fact, that’s probably the main reason you had “a missile here and a bomb there” and not an actual war.
A war in Lebanon is actually bad for Netanyahu. His interest is a slow-burning war so he can prolong the current situation as much as possible
The current situation is that he’s in a war in Gaza and that is keeping him in office. He can still spin this as “we are fighting against an existential threat”. Rocket defence and retaliation strikes aka the slow burning war in Lebanon is not enough for the Israeli society to unite behind Bibi. Only if they seriously attack. And I think Netanyahu wants to provoke such an attack.
Sending thousands of bombs God knows where they land is not a proper defense. It’s a huge escalation where Hezbollah will answer. I think the best argument against this strike has been thrown around everywhere: What if Hezbollah made such an attack where 3000 bombs where sent to IDF people. We would talk about a terrorist attack. Why is that different now?
First off, I think we should contextualize what happened - according to some news sources, the bombs were supposed to go off in the first days of an Israeli attack that would probably start an all out war (Some Hezbollah operatives became suspicious). The operation wasn’t intended to create an “escalation where Hezbollah will answer”, rather opening a full out attack against Hezbollah to force them to stop firing missiles at Israeli civilians and abide by the UN resolution.
Israel didn’t send “thousands of bombs God knows where they land”. They planted bombs in hardware that is used exclusively by Hezbollah operatives and their accomplices to evade gathering sigint. Yes, civilians got hurt. That’s the nature of war, and what makes it so horrible - people who might hold no malice nor pose any threat to the other side get hurt and die. The modern rules of warfare aren’t designed to eliminate civilian casualties, rather mainly to deter the warring parties from using civilians as a tool of war. That’s why an army can’t hide behind civilian population, but given an army that’s hiding behind civilian population, it’s acceptable for the other army to fire at them as long as they take proper measures to minimize civilian casualties (this in meant only as an example, not directly relating to Hezbollah or Hamas). If any act that results in civilian casualties is not “proper defense” I don’t think there has been a single case of “proper defense” in large scale armed conflict in modern history. People in the west might not realize it because for the last decades wars are fought away form their boarders, so it’s easier to view civilian casualties as optional.
And you know what? I’d WISH all civilian casualties in war would be confined to people who are in direct proximity to enemy personnel. If I could press a button and replace all Hezbollah attacks against civilian targets with bombs sent to IDF personnel, I’d do so in a heartbeat.
Regarding Netanyahu - right now, he’s slowly climbing in the polls. His plan is to keep his coalition from falling apart till the next election. Anything that disturbs the current situation is not in his interests (and, on the whole, the last time Netanyahu was proactive in anything other than a political capacity was about 2 decades ago). If Netanyahu wanted a war, he would have the public’s support for it months ago (in fact, the public very much supports a large scale conflict in order to stop Hezbollah targeting Israeli cities). His hand is being forced by other parties in the coalition. The obvious “culprit” are the far-right parties, but I personally think the main catalyst are the ultra-orthodox parties. This gets a bit complicated, but bear with me: The ultra-orthodox parties need to pass a law that’ll exempt their constituents from military service (long story short - they were exempt for years but due to court rulings, need a new law to keep that privilege). Galant (the minister of defense) is the one stopping the law from passing. Netanyahu was about to replace him and sell it to the public as Galant being the one who was against a war against Hezbollah. Actually, I’ll go as far as saying Israel being forced to activate the bombs prematurely, thus stopping Galant from being fired, makes a war a bit less likely (Though obviously other factors have also been put in play, so the government can’t just do a U turn).
They planted bombs in hardware that is used exclusively by Hezbollah operatives and their accomplices to evade gathering sigint. Yes, civilians got hurt. That’s the nature of war, and what makes it so horrible - people who might hold no malice nor pose any threat to the other side get hurt and die.
How is this argument different than defending the use of landmines?
So the pagers were ordered by Hezbollah. You send that text you don’t know if they are at a daycare picking up their kids, if they lost the pager and it’s sitting on some restaurant owner’s countertop next to some other family, etc etc etc.
There are so many things that can happen between when those pagers get rigged and sent out and the time they are detonated.
If Israel seemed at all like they tried to avoid bombing and shooting civilians in Gaza we could at least defend their actions there by saying “clearly they are trying to avoid civilian casualties” (we can’t, but we could) - but there is nothing but hopes and prayers to avoid civilian casualties in an attack like this.
Literally if any non-governmental entity did the same thing, no one would hesitate to call it a terrorist attack. And that’s what it is here, a terrorist attack.
Edit: Acknowledging that I typed Hamas out of habit instead of Hezbollah. Corrected.
The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas. They are two different entities, and while it doesn’t make any difference in the narrow context I’m replying to, it’s really a basic detail that anyone voicing an opinion on the matter should know.
How is this argument different than defending the use of landmines?
From the Wikipedia entry about landmines: “The use of land mines is controversial because they are indiscriminate weapons, harming soldier and civilian alike. They remain dangerous after the conflict in which they were deployed has ended, killing and injuring civilians and rendering land impassable and unusable for decades. To make matters worse, many factions have not kept accurate records (or any at all) of the exact locations of their minefields, making removal efforts painstakingly slow.”
Planting bombs inside pagers specifically used by Hezbollah isn’t indiscriminate (unless by “indiscriminate” you mean “when they go off, they harm anyone in the proximity”, but going by that definition everything with an exploding charge is “indiscriminate”, yet only mines are banned). And obviously exploded bombs don’t remain dangerous and aren’t difficult to remove.
The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas.
I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances.
And again - when you drop a bomb, you can credibly have made an attempt to ensure no one is in the vicinity who you don’t intend to bomb. (Not that israel seems to do this) - this is especially true with modern technology.
You cannot reasonably predict the path that a pager takes once it is shipped, no matter who it is intended for, not least because no one expects a pager to be the source of a deadly threat. You control who owns that “bomb” you have just sent into the world only until the moment it is unpacked and given to the first person who takes possession of it.
I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances.
Err… what circumstances? What was the purpose of drawing a parallel between Hamas and Hezbollah? What insight was I to gain by it? Asking seriously.
And again - when you drop a bomb, you can credibly have made an attempt to ensure no one is in the vicinity who you don’t intend to bomb. (Not that israel seems to do this) - this is especially true with modern technology.
Sorry, were you making two arguments or one? You asked about the difference between landmines and what Israel did. I thought the rest of what you said was to show how planting bombs in pagers is like landmines, not a new argument. If there were two arguments, you didn’t respond to my answer regarding landmines.
I can talk about the difference, and you’ll respond with a counter argument etc. Ultimately, it’ll come down to me saying Israel is able to reasonably predict who’ll carry the explosive and you saying they can’t. The bottom line for me is this:
Some weapons have been banned from warfare while others haven’t. The banned weapons follow certain criteria for being banned. exploda-pagers don’t follow the criteria under which landmines have been banned. If you know of other weapons or tactics that are banned and are akin to exploda-pagers, we can discuss that. Otherwise, I’m left with the conclusion what Israel did falls within the bounds of a legitimate military operation. You can, of course, think differently.
It’s war they wanted and it’s what they have. Couldn’t make it work in 75 years. We’ve heard enough and seen enough, nobody gets the benefit of the doubt in this. And I’m scared to even post this mild critic will make me an information warfare target. So tired of this shit.
Hezzbollah literally shoots rockets at Israel multiple times per week. Wtf are you talking about?
He wants the US at war before the sea change. once elected or close enough to it Harris can change her tune.
Israel might be the baddies…
Is this a cyberattack, or pre-planted explosives?
My dad used to have one and it runs on single AA bsttery. It will burn if exploded but I doubt will that make “man fell on the groud bleeding.” Newer models might use recharable batteries, yet the BMC (logically thinking) should be sperated from the communication part as charging have nothing to do with it. How are you going to use SMS to hack a part of the system which isn’t connected?
If it is pre-planted explosives, that’s just wet work and nothing to talk about it.
Of course, the attacker can do a supply chain attack (by threating/hacking the manufacture, excluding explosives) as a stage to make the cyberattack possible.
NYT has a link up which it claims has been verified. It is a video of someone at a market who had one of these in their messenger bag. The video shows a decent size explosion, which blew a big hole in the bag and knocked the guy to the ground.
I doubt you could make an explosion that big with a AA battery. They must have planted the stuff in some massive supply chain hack.
Yep, all the electrical engineers who have chimed in say it looks more like explosives.
A battery would get hot and start a fire. It wouldn’t instantly explode like this.
“Exploded” always sounded like an adorable kid word to me, like “He explodeded me!?”
I know its a regular and awful normal term but some things still sound funny to me
Thanks for sharing.
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Sort of telling how you can teach people to associate good thoughts with awful things. Conditioning is a bitch.
I’m no fan of Hezbollah but how is this different than spreading land mines? Even if you kill civilians in an air strike at least you can claim there were enemy combatants there. Here it is just “Eh, we’ll just kill people at random and see what happens.”
This is definitely one of the most interesting attacks that’s ever happened. It certainly doesn’t look like an accident. If it was indeed Mossad: take a bow, you’ve earned it. That was a pretty slick move. That was probably a difficult op to pull off. Gotta respect the craft, even if you disagree on the method.
Its not rocket science how they did it. What is the impressive part? Are we really just going to say civilians don’t matter? Is it impressive to you because of how many people were hurt?
In no way is it required to respect the craft or the method.
I wonder if you wouldve said the same thing about 9/11
I was about to say, they’re fucked in the head, but goddamn that was ingenious.
How exactly did they pull that off? And with walkie-talkies too. There’s no way you can do that with normal RF. The only thing I can figure is they had to intercept the devices and tamper with them in some way.
Hey @[email protected], you were saying that “these were extremely surgical strikes, people in the vicinity weren’t harmed”?
Thousands of people injured, all guilty of something ofc, because Israel would never do an attack which might harm innocents. Right? /S
Israel has a reckoning coming. The mercy they have shown is the mercy they will receive. I wish they would stop.
Anyone else confused about how these bombs are actually detonating? Articles say they are detonating via a text message sent 3x in error, theoretically causing either a spark or a “closed circuit” like a different article explained. The article (from al jazeera) says they have to look at the message but there’s video of one igniting in a bag.
I’m curious because I think these pagers may actually constitute a public safety risk, similar to how heavily landmined areas risk exploding even decades later on someone unrelated to the initial conflict.
Oh shit… Let me call the police about this! Sure thing! Right away!
Wait a minute!
LOL! You think I’m that stupid? You call them! Here, take my phone! I’m just gonna go hide behind that 1" thick steel wall! Oh, should we just run over to the station? It’s safer that way.
Whats scarey here is the amount if energy stored in smart phones. Pagers hold a fraction of the energy and the application here to the smart phone is the same.
I read in a NYT headline that they were pagers with explosives added in.
Here’s the article I saw but didn’t read.
Upvoted for the honesty
Isreal wants to start ww3!
Iran has already started it.
RIP Taiwanese electronic device export economy.
College campuses across the US/Canada will be holding memorial services, no doubt.
