Several thousand people have been injured after their pagers exploded in several locations in Lebanon. Explosions are said to have also occurred in Syria. Several of the injured are said to be members of Hezbollah, and sources tell AFP, among other things, that it is Israel that allegedly hacked the pagers.
This is something that Joakim von Braun, intelligence and security expert, believes may be true.
– I would put my money on it being Israel. Hezbollah is a given target for Israeli activity in general. To disrupt and destroy Hezbollah in various ways. Also, the Israelis are incredibly advanced in terms of technology. If that information is correct, they must have found some new opportunity to make these units explode, he says.
The theory behind it
IT security expert Marcus Murray speculates in different scenarios about how the pagers could have exploded.
– One can imagine that one scenario is a supply chain attack. This means that you have entered the supply chain. There, they have either influenced the equipment during development or they have gained access to these pagers during transport and managed to influence their content, he says and continues:
– Another theory could be to affect the lithium batteries in those pagers so that they go into overdrive and then “explode”. The strange thing is that it is difficult to make those batteries explode.
Could it be a hacker attack?
– It happened on several at the same time, when you do a hacker attack you have to get data into the pagers themselves. It is theoretically possible that one could abuse a command and affect the battery. Also, it is possible that it is a combination.
Could be the start of something bigger
In videos spread on social media, you can see how the pagers suddenly explode and how panic breaks out.
About an hour after the explosions, the news came that several people had died and several thousand had been injured. Joakim von Braun believes that this could be the start of something bigger.
– Either it’s just to generally point the finger at Hezbollah, like “look you can’t protect your leading people”, or it’s a first step to a bigger action against Hezbollah. For example, that Israel should go in and carry out a military coup in southern Lebanon or something similar. This has prevented the leading echelons of Hezbollah from having an opportunity to communicate as they usually do, he says.
Therefore, he believes Israel is behind it
Why do you think that it is Israel that is behind it?
– Above all, it is Israel that has this major conflict with Hezbollah and also the technical knowledge to carry out this type of operation. This is a technology that has been around now for over 30 years. That it hasn’t happened before must mean that this is pretty tricky to do and the Israelis have somehow managed to figure out how the hell to access these manikins.