I.T. News – Sept 19, 2024.

1 - How Did Thousands of Pagers Used by Hezbollah Explode at the Same Time?

Unprecedented attack in Lebanon, followed by explosions of walkie-talkies, comes after Israeli officials warned about escalating tensions

By Eduardo Kaplan, Melanie Evans and Sarah E. Needleman. Sept. 18, 2024

Thousands of people were injured and 12 killed Tuesday when pagers exploded in Lebanon in an apparent Israeli attack against the militant group Hezbollah. On Wednesday, Hezbollah was hit by another wave of exploding devices across Lebanon, this time involving walkie-talkies, people familiar with the matter said.

Why are Hezbollah operatives using pagers?

Hezbollah acknowledged the vulnerability of its communication networks earlier in its escalating conflict with Israel, which began in October last year with the start of Israel’s war in Gaza. The Israeli military has been fighting a war against Hamas in Gaza since an attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people. In February, the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, urged its fighters to get rid of their smartphones, saying Israel could use them for surveillance or targeting. A Hezbollah official said Tuesday that many fighters had pagers.

Where did the pagers come from and who made them?

Many of the affected pagers were from a new shipment that Hezbollah had received recently, part of a nearly yearlong process to swap out older devices.

Early reports said that the pagers were manufactured by a company called Gold Apollo in Taiwan. Gold Apollo’s president, Hsu Ching-kuang, told reporters on Wednesday that his company didn’t make the pagers and that they were made by a foreign company that had licensed his company’s brand and trademark about two years ago.

Gold Apollo later said the pagers were designed and built by BAC Consulting Kft, a company registered in Budapest, Hungary. Calls to that company went unanswered. BAC Consulting, which was registered in 2022, says it works on projects as varied as cybersecurity, telecommunications and jewelry. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government said Wednesday said the company has no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary and that the pager devices used in the mass detonations in Lebanon were never in the country.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said Gold Apollo has exported some 260,000 pagers since 2022, including almost 41,000 between January and August this year, with no record of direct exports to Lebanon.

How did the pagers explode in Lebanon?

Hezbollah said a number of pagers carried by its members exploded simultaneously at 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday. Survivors reported hearing the pagers beep and display a series of numbers on their screens about five seconds before they detonated.

According to people familiar with Hezbollah’s investigation, the initial assessment is the pagers detonated because an explosive device was planted in the new models. The scenario indicates Israel found its way into Hezbollah’s supply chain to modify the devices that were delivered.

Robert Graham, chief executive of Errata Security, a cybersecurity company in Atlanta, said it was possible that hackers made the batteries inside the pagers blow up with a page containing malicious code, but that would be highly challenging. The hackers would need to know the make and model of the devices, and the effect wouldn’t be as powerful as videos of the explosions suggest, he said.

A more likely scenario, according to Graham, is that a shipment of pagers from their manufacturer was intercepted en route to their destination and explosives were placed inside along with malicious code. A page would set them off

What do we know about Wednesday’s walkie-talkie explosions?

The walkie-talkies that exploded had new batteries that had arrived in a recent shipment and had been distributed to a narrower range of Hezbollah members than the pagers, people familiar with the matter said. Hezbollah members said some of the explosions