Matt BlazeSep 17, 2024
Current reporting from NYT and others (gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/17/world/israel-hamas-war-news?unlocked_article_code=1.LU4.yQNN.lrxL0ef79K2O&smid=url-share) essentially confirms the speculation: Supply chain tampering with a new batch of 3000 pagers from Taiwan ordered by Hezbollah, involving adding 2oz of explosive material near the battery. Reports of 2800 injured, implying that essentially all of them went off, apparently nearly simultaneously, suggesting this was not targeting particular individuals (just anyone with a pager in the batch). At least nine deaths so far.
Pagers Explode Across Lebanon in Apparent Attack on Hezbollah

The attack killed 11 people, including a young girl. Officials briefed on the operation say Israeli operatives planted explosives in pagers Hezbollah bought from a Taiwanese company. Israel declined to comment.

The New York Times
Show threadMatt BlazeSep 17, 2024
... The pagers apparently were programmed to beep and then display a message ostensibly from Hezbollah leadership, and then explode, behavior that would encourage users to be in close proximity to the device as it exploded.
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Show threadMatt BlazeSep 17, 2024

Unclear from reporting how they were triggered. Some possibilities include:

- completely offline (all the compromised pagers were pre-programmed to beep and explode at a particular time)

- a broadcast signal (possibly sent by a high power transmitter controlled by Israel) that all the devices were programed to respond to

- individually addressed messages to each of the pagers (less likely, since that would take a while to go through).

My guess is the first.

Show threadMatt BlazeSep 18, 2024
... The disadvantage (to the attacker) of offline pre-scheduled triggering is that it becomes essentially impossible to scrub or reschedule the attack if something goes wrong or there's reason for delay. So I wouldn't rule out a broadcast signal entirely. Assuming some of the devices survived (duds, etc), I'd imagine there's a lot of reverse-engineering being attempted right now.
Show threadMatt BlazeSep 18, 2024
Notably, the NYT reporting isn't hedging even slightly on identifying Israel as the source of the attack, though does note that they haven't officially commented.
Show threadMatt BlazeSep 18, 2024
As I've noted elsewhere, one-way pagers (at least the kind that don't explode) are actually a pretty good way for a covert organization to communicate with its members. Unlike cellphones, which are constantly registering with a local tower, pagers don't expose the locations of recipients to the infrastructure or to eavesdroppers. They work by "flooding" - broadcasting all messages over the entire service area, leaving it to the devices to filter out the messages addressed to them.
Show threadMatt BlazeSep 18, 2024
Another note: a supply chain compromise is a very powerful capability, and by using it this way they effectively completely burned it, foreclosing the possibility of future exploitation. Hezbollah (and anyone else who considers Israel an adversary) is going to be *very* careful about how it sources its gear for the foreseeable future. (What else might you do if you could control comms gear of your adversary?) This was likely VERY carefully considered, likely at the highest levels of government.
Show threadMatt BlazeSep 18, 2024

The plot continues to thicken, with another wave of exploding devices reported among Hezbollah members around Lebanon today. This time, it appears to include walkie-talkie-type radios. I've not yet found reliable reports of specific models of radios, so it's hard to even speculate yet on how these might have been triggered - possibly over the air, but also possibly with a pre-set timer.

What's clear is that Hezbollah's supply chain problem is even worse than it seemed yesterday.

Show threadMatt BlazeSep 18, 2024
Note that there are obviously a large number of moral, ethical, and legal questions about this whole operation. I'm focused on the technical, strategic, and logistical issues in this thread, which should not be taken to suggest in any way that I don't think those questions are important or worth probing. It's just not what I'm exploring here.
Show threadMatt BlazeSep 18, 2024

On the latest round of explosions, so far I've found a couple photos of a mangled Icom model V82 walkie-talkie, a discontinued (but still widely available around the world in counterfeited form) commercial analog two-way radio.

But it's unclear if that's the only type of device that exploded today, and it's also possible that the various photos I've seen are all of the same individual radio. Still haven't seen good authoritative reports of the scope and scale of todays wave of explosions.

Show threadaardvark
@mattblaze I may store some radios for emergency use away from the house until we get a better sense of how controlled and targeted the supply chain manipulation was.
Sep 18, 2024 at 8:44pmWeb