Bodies fill the corridors of Beirut hospitals this morning as doctors desperately try to help those caught in a mass explosion of pagers across Lebanon yesterday. Hezbollah operatives appeared to have been caught off guard by the detonation of thousands of pagers on Tuesday – an unprecedented attack on a technology brought in to replace mobile phones feared susceptible to Israeli hacking.
Israel and its military has not yet commented on the explosions, nor taken accountability for the attacks. Lebanese authorities were quick to blame ‘Israeli aggression’ as Hezbollah vowed revenge. But the question remains: why were Hezbollah using thousands of pagers – a technology made mostly obsolete in recent years – and what caused them to explode en masse causing thousands of casualties?
Nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 injured when pagers detonated across southern Lebanon yesterday afternoon. Most of these appear to have been Hezbollah members, long embroiled in conflict with Israel to the south. But such an explosive attack was inevitably impossible to control; children and civilians are reported to be among the casualties. ‘This is not a security targeting of one, two or three people. This is a targeting of an entire nation,’ senior Hezbollah official Hussein Khalil said while paying his condolences for Ammar’s son.
Video showed how pagers billowed smoke before detonating in public places, sending their wearing flying. In one clip, shop CCTV showed a person paying at a grocery store as a small handheld device next to the cashier exploded. Ambulances rushed through the southern suburbs of Beirut amid widespread panic. Hospitals were overwhelmed with patients. The head of the Nabatieh public hospital in the south of the country, Hassan Wazni, told Reuters that around 40 wounded people were being treated at his facility. The wounds included injuries to the face, eyes and limbs.
Iraq has since sent some 15 tonnes of medicine and supplies, with 70 tonnes more expected to arrive later today. Doctors from the Iranian Red Crescent Society – a non-governmental humanitarian organisation – have also arrived in Lebanon to support efforts to get aid where it is most needed. Some of those caught up in the explosions have been left blinded. Others need amputations. Tensions had been boiling over in recent weeks, with cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah occurring almost daily. But such a broad and ‘indiscriminate’ attack will serve as a powerful warning from the party responsible – that even untraceable devices hidden away in pockets miles from the frontlines are not safe from espionage.
Details are still disputed. The New York Times reported that Israel hid explosive material in a number of Taiwan-made Gold Apollo pagers before they were imported to Lebanon, citing American and other officials briefed on the operation. It was still unclear exactly when the pagers were ordered, and when they arrived in Lebanon. Gold Apollo execs this morning said the company had only authorised its brand on the devices, and that they were manufactured and sold by Hungary’s BAC Consulting KFT. The CEO of BAC Consulting, Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono says on her LinkedIn profile that she has worked as an advisor for various organisations including UNESCO. She did not respond to emails from Reuters. The company website makes no reference to manufacturing.
And a Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand, but declined to say how long they had been in use. Much is still left to clarify. But how did Hezbollah’s adversaries manage to detonate several thousand pagers? Mikko Hypponen, a research specialist at the software company WithSecure, told the New York Times the pagers were likely ‘modified in some way’. ‘The size and strength of the explosion indicates it was not just the battery,’ he said. Early speculation in the wake of the blasts suggested an Israeli hack could have overloaded the lithium ion batteries powering the pagers, which can burn up to 590 degrees celsius (1,100 F) when ignited.
But a slew of security sources and experts have since determined the detonations were caused by an Israeli operation that disrupted the supply chain and inserted explosives into the pagers that were subsequently remotely activated by the coded error message. A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a triggering device, a detonator and an explosive charge. ‘A pager has three of those already,’ explained the ex-officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he now works as a consultant with clients on the Middle East. ‘You would only need to add the detonator and the charge.’ By the time of the attack, ‘the battery was probably half-explosive and half-actual battery,’ said Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec.
A senior Lebanese source backed the assessments, saying the devices had been modified by Israel’s spy service ‘at the production level.’ ‘The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner,’ the source said. Hezbollah had only recently adopted pagers, fearing mobile phones might be too easy to hack. Sources told the Reuters news agency that the group had begun to suspect that Israel was tracking their phones by the end of last year. It would take a few months to settle on an alternative. The disruption was felt: senior Hezbollah execs stopped bringing their phones into meetings. Supporters were told to bury their phones or lock them away.
‘Shut it off, bury it, put it in an iron chest and lock it up,’ Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah told supporters in a televised address in February. ‘Do it for the sake of security and to protect the blood and dignity of people. The collaborator (with the Israelis) is the cell phone in your hands, and those of your wife and your children. This cell phone is the collaborator and the killer.’ And then the group found their work-around. Two sources ‘familiar with the group’s operations’ told Reuters earlier this year that pagers would be used as a low-tech means of communication in order to evade Israeli tracking. The devices were developed from the 1950s but took off in the 80s, before the advent of truly portable mobile phones. Some could only receive short text messages from a sender. Later models were able to send and receive messages.
Still today pagers are used by emergency services due to their resilience over mobile phones; modern systems overlap in their coverage, and with satellite communications to boot often prove more effective than cellular networks. Without GPS built in, they are also almost impossible to be location-tracked. Modern hospitals still use pagers, too, as fans of hospital dramas will know. They have long lasting batteries, require little maintenance, offer good coverage and – vitally – continue working even during a power outage. The AR-924 pager ordered by Hezbollah, advertised as being ‘rugged,’ contains a rechargeable lithium battery, according to specifications once advertised on Gold Apollo’s website before it was apparently taken down.
It allowed Hezbollah members to communicate in messages of up to 100 characters. It also claimed to have up to 85 days of battery life – a crucial factor in Lebanon, where electricity outages have been common in recent years under strain of economic collapse. Pagers were handed out to supporters across the group’s various branches – from fighters to medics working in its relief services. ‘This attack hit them in their Achilles’ heel because they took out a central means of communication,’ Israeli cybersecurity expert and researcher at Tel Aviv University Keren Elazari told the New York Times. ‘We have seen these types of devices, pagers, targeted before but not in an attack this sophisticated.’
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