Main Edition
US
FR
September 19, 2024 - 7:00am
The suspected Israeli attack on Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah using explosive pagers and walkie-talkies is a spectacular flex, but one that would have been much harder to achieve 50 years ago.
The details of how Israeli intelligence supposedly achieved the operation are still not fully known. It’s not clear whether Mossad set up a dummy company to sell the pagers to Hezbollah, or intercepted consignments of pagers in transit to add the explosives using software capable of responding to a remote command. It may have done both, but it doesn’t really matter. What is more interesting is that the operation took advantage of deep, long and often loosely coupled global supply chains. No doubt more supply chain attacks will follow.
In their eternal quest to “unlock value”, financial markets have forced the large, vertically integrated industrial giants that dominated postwar economies to divest and outsource, creating instead relationships of discrete horizontally-integrated suppliers. (At least outside Korea, which retains its horizontally-integrated chaebol, such as LG and Samsung.)
As a consequence, there are now more entities in a supply chain in many more locations. Inevitably, this creates problems with oversight and accountability, as the Crowdstrike outage in July demonstrated. The bickering and finger-pointing between Microsoft and third-party company Crowdstrike highlighted how hard it is to make one company take responsibility.
US Congress has also conducted inquiries into the high-profile SolarWinds attack in 2020 that planted malicious software in the supply chain. A suspected Russian attack, it led to serious data breaches in the US Federal Government’s systems. Once a supplier is crippled — as blood lab Synnovis was this year — there is very little the upstream customer can do.
But many of our other technology supply chains have become more vulnerable too. The shift of manufacturing to China, or China-dominated economies such as Vietnam, and the obsessive desire to connect devices to a network both make the risks exponentially worse. The British deep state has been active in recognising the threat. Despite leaving the EU, the UK has obliged the rest of Europe to adopt much stricter UK-written security guidelines for domestic internet-connected devices such as doorbell cameras or routers.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThis was a brilliantly planned attack that directly targeted pagers and other devices specifically distributed by terrorists to other terrorists.
There is also the sheer hilarity of anti Semitic, racist cowards, who freely target “enemy” civilians and hide among civilians themselves, getting their comeuppance in a way that would make them fear their own shadows.
And, further on the plus side, it seems a few of them might not have much use for the 72 virgins any more.
Peniside? Gonadcide? Whichever way, Hezbolah made a balls up!
There is also the “sheer hilarity” of these devices exploding in marketplaces and other public sites because these anti-Semitic, racist cowards move freely among civilian non-combatants. Or, is the assumption that only Israeli civilians are non-combatants, not Lebanese?
Yes, it’s a pity the Israelis couldn’t figure out a weapon that only targets combatants and completely excludes the pure, innocent civilians around them, who largely support, vote for and provide sanctuary to Hezbollah and Hamas.
Maybe something like the thousands of combatant only rockets fired by at Israel, that miraculously only hit IDF soldiers, or the guns carried by Hamas’ militants on the 7th that automatically avoided firing on anyone not in uniform?
The anti-Israeli elements in the media have been bleating non-stop about wanton disregard for civilian casualties as if every electronic device in the country had been programmed to explode like a Claymore but the evidence doesn’t seem to support that rhetoric.
There’s a video (looks like a security cam) taken in a fruit market that’s getting a lot of airplay. Three people within 3 or 4 feet of the target and after the pager popped they all ran off without so much as a “Hey, are you OK buddy?” All except the guy with the pager of course. He wasn’t going anywhere. The video is a little grainy but it didn’t look like any fruit was damaged either.
This operation has to win some sort of award for avoiding collateral damage and civilian casualties.
The Iranian ambassador was a civilian casualty. As was the 9-year-old girl Fatima. And how do you know that the guy in the fruit market was an enemy combatant? Hezbollah is a political party and social organization as well as a military force. A pager is not a military weapon, but a civilian device.
The Iranian ambassador a civilian? Are you mad? He was important enough in Hezbollah to have been issued a Hezbollah pager. Any device used for terrorist activity is a weapon.
We’re those two children terrorists. Or maybe future terrorists. Or the future Mothers of terrorists.
No, but I haven’t seen you criticising Hamas or Hezbollah for deliberately targeting civilians of all ages. At least the Israelis attempt to target terrorists, while terrorists prefer to target civilians.
Doctors have pagers. Long distance hikers on trails in USA use walkie talkies. They say for when there’s no signal but I suspect it’s to evade Googlespy,the all seeing eye. I thought of getting something like that as now our line of communication is narrowed down to one phone. Not everybody with a pager or a walkie talkies is HAMAS. Or is everybody Hamas. I am Spartacus. I am Charlie Hebdo. I am Hamas.
Don’t be so silly! It was only Hezbollah’s pagers etc that were rigged. These were not random attacks as used by Hamas and Hezbollah.
A weapon specifically targeting only the terrorists. Perhaps it is a good point to consider that the Pandora’s box was when terrorism was normalized and western governments started subsidizing Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc.
An incredibly sophisticated action against terrorists who hide among the general,population. On the other hand a sophisticated course of action for terrorists against those they want to terrorise. But, imagine being afraid of technology, like something as straight forward as a phone. What might that lead to? Back to basics?
Tom tom drums and smoke signals?
Notes on paper and a network of trusted couriers. Even better short spoken and remembered messages not written down at all. Then The Yahoos agents can enjoy torturing people to make them talk.
“A hostile actor could cause gridlock by imposing a 15 mph maximum speed cap during rush hour via malicious software.”
20 mph seems to work pretty well!
It would still be 5 mph faster than the average on parts of the M3 and M25 in the morning rush hour.
I tend to agree with the Pandora’s Box aspect.
An implicit understanding among players to the effect of ‘just don’t let’s go there ‘ doesn’t fill me with confidence.
One of Israel’s key exports is security-related technology.
Is this an advertisement?
I should say so. I’m on Amazon right now.
Mossad booby trapped a phone in the 90s to kill a Hamas leader, but that was just one item, not the hundreds they’ve booby trapped here.
Author perceptively uses this to further enhance our awareness of other risks. V welcome. Maybe also makes some better appreciate why we moved away from Huawei. A good number never quite understood it yet it seemed obvious the security assessment couldn’t be fully shared
I worked for big company which decided to implement Huawei hardware on its network.
Decision was both technical (Nokia and Ericsson were well behind on technology curve) and financial (it was circa £500 mln cheaper).
Security assessment was made and it was not great re Huawei.
So some of the money saved was supposed to be used to provide mitigation for security risks.
Many of us argued that it was not going to work but were told to shut up or else.
Another example of Western leaders selling down their country to dictatorships so they can claim multimillion bonuses for savings.
Nothing is new here, even explosive component, apart from the scale of the attack.
Well done Israel.
Few examples I can recall from my working days used similar approach.
In one case USA government intercepted Cisco devices on a way to various customers and installed backdoors.
Cisco CEO was so furious that he went public with it complaining that USA government wants to kill American company.
In another case, someone (probably China) installed their own backdoors on Cisco gear and advertised it cheaply.
Even USA government contractors fell for it and installed these devices on various military networks.
Greed of Western leaders is powerful weapon for enemies of the West.
In another case I worked on, some genius decided to install Chinese made fibre SFPs on secure airgapped network.
That was approved by that company security under pressure from finance department.
There were no data leaks detected but devices caused 100 fold rise in switches errors.
I can’t believe how many of my fellow country people are evil,murderous and bloodthirsty. And go to church.
This use of explosives in nonmilitary devices seems barbaric terrorism to me. It pales in the light of the October 7 barbarism, but that doesn’t make it legitimate. Israel’s killing and maiming outside of military settings should stop. Terror and assassination is wrong no matter who does it.
But they are Gods Chosen People,they can do no wrong. Their progenitor Jacob/Israel was a liar,a thief,an elder abuser,a cheat,a betrayer,a spiv. God likes to confound our expectations.
These pagers were just as much military devices as any other military form of communication.
‘Were what convinced the UK to join the US in removing Huawei equipment from its infrastructure by 2027.’ Wrong. The U.K. will and has sold out to anyone that wants to buy our, land, utilities, IP, national security. Will subsidise foreign profits above British futures. The likes of BT would replace Cisco, VMware, Juniper in a moment with Huawei to save a few quid, couldn’t care less about the Chinese. No, the U.K. was ‘convinced’ only by the NSA who would share even fewer secrets with GCHQ if we didn’t. Almost every other country protects its interests and its people. Only the U.K. sells us out to Palantir, Google and the Chinese.
It’s not Russians or Chinese who are planting explosive bugs in all our connected household devices,it’s the CIA,those bad actors seeking World Government. Ok,so not our ovens and our Alexa’s – yet. Films were being made on this theme 40 years ago. It’s not like we haven’t been warned.
What of the argument that Mossad has opened a Pandora’s Box? Aside from the significant risks of collateral damage implied by this type of warfare, does it not open the door for all kinds of non-conventional attacks, the counter to which will make everyone’s lives less free and poopier?
I disagree, the box was opened a long time ago – the article points to other less well known attacks. That this attack, targeted against terrorists with a very high combatant to civilian injury ratio, has been so visible globally, just serves to wake people up the a threat they have been blissfully ignorant of for many years.
I don’t think the terrorists have been waiting for doors to be opened for them!
Would you consider 9/11 or the Oct 7 massacre ‘conventional’? Terrorism deliberately aimed at civilians is surely unconventional. Disabling your military opponents is conventional and methods include not only violence but also damage to communications, logistics, military morale and political will.
Yes,it’s an ongoing thing now. Live with it. No,die with it.
It seems clear now that the Mossad set up a dummy corporation called BAC that took a license about a year ago from the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo that has long made these pagers. The Mossad then had the pagers manufactured, adding a dab of explosives, a detonator, and special software to them. How the Mossad got Hezbollah to order the pagers from BAC is not known. Maybe the price offered was too good to pass up.
So I don’t see any connection to supply chains. These pagers were made specially in a factory somewhere for BAC and then sold by BAC. They weren’t intercepted and modified along the way. The Hungarian offices of BAC were dummy offices that hid the manufacturing, but it’s clear that this was not a supply chain attack but a false flag operation.
Well, we could, of course make attacks like this a little less likely by enforcing the breaches of current interrnational law that this attack represents.
For example, I believe that there are already conventions against weapons that are primarily designed to maim rather than kill combatants and also laws against the use of booby traps in civilian areas.
Part of the problem is that we have refused to enforce existing international law against Israel for so long that it has become a veritable laboratory for the evaluation of new forms of warfare.
Another part of the problem is that the US has (arguably) breached the same laws by sending cluster munitions to Ukraine.
In the aftermath of the two world wars, the western powers built an edifice of legal theory that recognised the power we now had to destroy ourselves and sought to constrain it. It was never perfect and it certainly wasn’t universally enforced but it was a start. For the last 20 years the leadership of the same western powers haven’t even pretended that those laws constrain them and they have ceded any claim to the moral high ground that they might once have had.
Regime change operations,Illegal invasionsTorture and redition without due processWithdrawal from the geneva conventions through the invention of enemy combatant status.Drone strikesThe use of unconventional and illegal weaponsAnd the failure to support the ICJ in its investigation of the highest criime of all – genocide.
It is monumentally stupid and spectacularly dangerous.
“there are already conventions against weapons that are primarily designed to maim rather than kill” – oh the humanity!
There are no conventions against weapons designed to maim.
Most antipersonnel mines are designed to maim.
It occupies 2 or more enemy combatants on the battlefield and creates long term problems with support of injured and disabled.
Perhaps we should also forcibly stop terrorists snd their paymasters.