The world is shocked by the beeper attack in Lebanon. The French newspaper "Le Figaro" cited experts in the world who are trying to explain the spectacular action. And so it is written: "The results of the massive attack against the Hezbollah in Lebanon are spectacular: at least 11 dead and 2,800 wounded.
The pagers used by the Lebanese militia that exploded in the pockets or hands of the victims, as we clearly see in several videos flooding the The social networks. But how could these small devices for receiving messages on radio waves explode - as they are long gone with the advent of cell phones - yet become pocket bombs"?
The newspaper listed one possibility: "The craziest rumor that sparked the first comments seems to come straight out of a science fiction movie: the beeper's lithium battery was breached and overheated, eventually exploding. This is a hypothesis suggested by a Hezbollah source on Wall Street C Vernell specifies that malware could be installed on the devices. But this theory could remain pure science fiction."
But he also brought up another possibility: "Security experts are moving towards another, more classical, but equally amazing mode of operation because it is complex to achieve on such a large scale. The thousands of beepers were simply trapped, by incorporating explosive charges. This hypothesis is consistent with statements of three Lebanese sources who told Reuters that the affected pagers are a modern model recently purchased by Hezbollah in recent months."
"Seizing a phone by embedding an explosive is one thing... but seizing several thousand devices is another! In this context, it is necessary to intercept and intervene along an entire supply chain, all with complete discretion. This action may be "one of the supply chain attacks The most significant physics in history," commented on the analysis Dmitry Alperovich, a former manager of an IT security company.
A former British Army munitions expert said on condition of anonymity that 10 to 20 grams of military-grade explosives may have been hidden inside a fake electronic component, which slipped into each beeper. The payload was then armed with a letter in the form of an "alphanumeric text message" (a term covering the characters of the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals). The explosive thus armed would be automatically activated as soon as the device was used by its user.
This hypothesis also seems to be confirmed by several videos showing that a few seconds before the explosions that seem to have occurred at the same time at 3:30 p.m., Hezbollah members took the trainings out of their pockets, as if they had received a message.
"The institution penetrated the entire supply chain"
"According to the video recordings, a small plastic explosive was definitely hidden near the battery (of the beepers) for the purpose of remote activation by sending a message," Charles Lister, an expert at the Middle East Institute (MEI), assesses on the X social network. Which means for him that the Mossad undoubtedly "infiltrated the production process and added a remotely activated explosive component to the tweeters, without arousing suspicion," adds the Brussels-based military analyst Eliyahu Maganieh, describing "a major security flaw in Hezbollah's protocols."
"Either by posing as a supplier or by injecting the traded equipment directly into Hezbollah's supply chain through its vulnerable points (transportation trucks, merchant ships), they were able to distribute the beepers within the organization," assesses Mike Dimino, a former security expert. CIA analyst.
Sky News Arabia cites sources who claim that the Israeli agency placed "an amount of PETN, a highly explosive substance, on the batteries of the devices, and caused them to explode by increasing the temperature of the batteries remotely." Which would explain why certain members of Hezbollah got rid of them in time, when they were alerted by their pager overheating, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Another hypothesis, according to Riad Kahwaji, a security analyst based in Dubai, "Israel controls a large part of the electronics industries in the world and without a doubt, one of the factories it owns produced and shipped these explosive devices that exploded today."
"It is unlikely that this is a cyber attack, the pagers are outdated"
The Washington Post, quoting experts, also raises the hypothesis of "sabotaging the devices before they are shipped."
Emily Harding, deputy director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believed that despite the many gray areas, it is likely that Israel was able to penetrate the supply chain that Hezbollah uses for training. Although a cyber attack is possible, it is unlikely given the "low-tech" nature of the pagers, she added.
The attack "highlights the extent to which Israel penetrated Hezbollah's communications network," according to researcher Lina Khatib, from the British think tank Chatham House, quoted by the BBC. "Many Hezbollah members started using pagers after cell phones belonging to some of their members were damaged by Israeli hacking," she said.
Already in 1996, the Shin Bet, one of Israel's intelligence agencies, assassinated a Hamas bomb maker using explosives placed on his phone.