Lessons from Hezbollah's exploding pagers: No electronic device is safe! – Business Today
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Hezbollah’s exploding pagers: Nine-Seventeen, that’s the new 9/11 for the Hezbollah terror group of Lebanon. The Iran-backed terror group was dealt a serious blow in recent times when an estimated 3,000 pagers exploded within the span of an hour on the afternoon of September 17. The explosions began in the southern suburbs of Beirut, considered a stronghold of the Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group that aims for the destruction of Israel.
Thousands were injured and several killed when the pagers detonated. Users held them in their hands or brought them close to their faces to read the screens. These pagers were being used by Hezbollah members and associates after the terror group replaced the more vulnerable mobile phones with seemingly low-tech pagers.
THE MODUS OPERANDI
The operation was not just about hacking, cyber-warfare, supply-chain infiltration, industrial espionage or super spies at work. It was in fact, an incredible combination of all.
According to reports, the infiltration began at the supply-chain stage with explosives – some reports say 3 grams of PETN was inserted in the pagers. Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate or PETN as it is commonly known, is a relatively stable chemical used as an explosive since World War I.
The pagers, seldom used elsewhere, found their way into Lebanon among Hezbollah activists over the past few months. Undoubtedly helped by a diktat from the terror group hierarchy this February that its members had to start using pagers as the preferred communication device. This was to avoid Israeli tracking of their mobile phones.
Full details are not available yet, but some tweaks are also thought to have been made to the batteries in these pagers. These modifications reportedly allowed the battery to instantly overheat and trigger the explosives.
It is speculated that a radio signal was sent to the pagers, by hacking the Lebanese radio network they on. Images show pagers ringing and screens lighting up just before the explosions.
NEW FEAR UNLOCKED
The deadly pagers have led to fears that other devices like cell phones, Airpods, headphones, laptops and even pace-makers turning targets of such attacks. These battery-based devices are susceptible because they can receive remote inputs via radio signals.
However, experts rule out such attacks. “This was a targeted attack carried out by an extremely sophisticated party or parties, likely a nation state actor or a bunch of nation state actors,” said Joseph Steinberg, author of ‘Cybersecurity For Dummies’, adding, “So unless you’re a terrorist or involved in some terrible activity, I think you can rest assured that your cell phone or pager, if for some reason you’re using a pager, is not likely to undergo similar, spontaneous combustion of this nature.”
THE INFILTRATION OF SUPPLY CHAINS
Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese company which has its brand stamped on the pagers, said it had nothing to do with the manufacturing of the deadly pagers. It relinquished responsibility to a third-party contract manufacturer BAC based in Europe. “There is an agent in Europe whom we have cooperated with for three years, they are the agent for all of our products. They also produced a pager, using our brand name, they pay us for using our logo,” Gold Apollo founder and President Hsu Ching-Kuang said.
Cyber security expert Pawan Duggal agrees the supply chain is the new Achille’s Heel of the security set up. “We do not know where our mobiles are getting manufactured, what kind of a malware, spyware or contamination is already fed in as part of supply chain and what kind of potential targeting can be done”, he said in a conversation with the India Today group.
Steinberg concurs, “We have factories in the United States, there are factories in China. You know, some of these devices are made by American companies. It is possible that Western governments intentionally sabotage this particular line of pagers or this particular, you know, set of pagers that were being delivered to Hezbollah”, he says about the possibility of the pagers being intercepted and loaded with explosives.
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