09/20/2024
OK, Lebanon. Two theories, first seems to be popular in the press. This suggests that a Golden Appolo company in Taiwan licensed a company in Hungary to manufacture pagers etc, the Hungarian company was a Mossad front, and they installed plastic explosives and detonators into the devices, then, somehow, got them to Hezbollah activists. Having hacked Hezbollah security, Mossad had secured the phone numbers of Hezbollah, and then, one day, reached out and touched somebody.
The other explanation shares the hacking - but in this view the real story is that Mossad never touched the pagers, phones, radios. Instead, having secured the phone numbers, they used software that instructed the device's batteries to overheat, causing lithium battery explosions.
The first theory suggests that either most devices like this in Lebanon are b***ytrapped, because otherwise how could you guarantee that your targets were carrying them? How could you guarantee someone didn't break their device and open it up finding a little surprise? The part of this theory that doesn't stand up to scrutiny is how Mossad could get b***y trapped phones into the hands of their targets.
If there is a way to send a signal that can instruct a device to overheat its own battery, then all you need is the phone number of your target, the lithium battery is all the explosive you need. We'll get back to the implications if this is true.
One thing stands out. As a new method of warfare this is positively brilliant. The tactical timing is very odd. And it was so fundamentally stupid it leaves one breathless.
Brilliant, because the ability to both attack anyone whose phone # you can get, to make a whole technology toxic and dangerous which can shut down enemy communications - would you carry a phone or pager if you feared it might detonate? Bombardment breaks phone lines, microwave transmission can be detected and intercepted, allowing the enemy to target your location and to listen in.
The timing - if this had happened as the IDF's tanks rolled over the Lebanese border, which seems in the offing, it would totally disrupt Hezbollah communications at a vital moment. This trick works best the first time it is used. IF the pagers were b***ytrapped, you can expect every pager in Lebanon is being carefully inspected, and probably replaced with carefully checked devices. Countermeasures will be taken. So why did Mossad show its hand prematurely?
Finally, the implications if the explosions were battery explosions, not plastic explosives. Oh boy. If the Israelis can figure out how to send a signal to a personal electronic device that will cause its battery to blow up in someone's pocket, depend on it - not only every government in the world has some geeks working on how to duplicate the trick (as well as how to protect devices from such hacking), but so will thousands of young guys in their basement apartments. If you are trying to use this trick for a targeted assassination, you need the number of the device you want to blow. But if you don't care who the target is, you could, say, generate random phone numbers from a computer. Any number you want. Can you see where this goes? "Hello, is this the White House? Please deposit 500 million in bit coin in this offshore bank account, say in the next half hour, or what is about to happen will happen again tomorrow. Bye." And five minutes later 10,000 randomly selected cell phones blow up in people's back pockets, shirt pockets, on the end of selfie sticks, wherever.
Our interconnected technical age... may be about to strangle in its own network. What sort of web have we woven?
