Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Let’s talk about the pager attack against Hezbollah

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 15:56:15 GMT

First off, this was a nation-state supply chain attack. It was pretty obviously carried off by Israel, and demonstrated that they have a person inside Hezbollah’s organization. They either saw the order for replacing all the pagers being put together, or possibly did a persuasion campaign and caused the order for the pagers to come together. Then at some point in the manufacturing/delivery chain the order was intercepted and all the devices were modified.

The company that sold them is just a branding company in Taipei. They were made in Hungary, the home of Viktor Orban, friend to and also deep in the pockets of Uncle Vlad in Moscow. The company that made them may well be a shell company as the “corporate HQ” address is a residential house with pieces of paper in the window and the person who answered the house said it’s just a mail drop for a number of companies, much like a certain address in Delaware. The president or CEO of the company, when reached, said ‘We didn’t make them’.

The pagers were modified with a small amount of a plastique explosive compound and a detonator, rigged to trigger on the receipt of a coded signal. And yesterday afternoon, the signal was sent, killing a dozen people and maiming quite a number more. It isn’t clear if it was a group page or a broadcast signal from another transmitter. At least three children among the dead. Several Hezbollah members who had been issued the pagers noticed they were getting hot, took them off and threw them away.

The pagers themselves were ruggedized with a rechargeable battery designed to last a few weeks between charges. There are advantages to pagers, believe it or not. They’re still heavily used in hospitals because the transmitters will get a signal through the heavy radiation-shielded walls reliably. They’re also normally receive-only devices, so you can’t trace a person’s movement with them, convenient for people who don’t want to be traced. So they’re still in use around the world, but not nearly in the numbers that they were in the pre-smart phone era. In an area like the Middle East that may have shaky telecoms, a pager might be a reliable communications device.

That was Tuesday. Today is Wednesday, and another surge of mass device bombings has taken place.

It's been reported that thousands of walkie talkies used by Hezbollah in Lebanon have blown up, resulting in more deaths, lots more injuries, and massive property damage. And the deaths were not confined to Lebanon, there were also reports of deaths and injuries in Syria. It was also reported that some solar panels exploded.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bc-ml-lebanon-israel-exploding-pagers-hungary-firm_n_66eab9b2e4b00648275b59ef

https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1427496/recap-14-killed-almost-3000-injured-in-latest-toll-from-pager-blasts.html

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Ecuador: someone is mailing USB sticks with explosives in them to journalists

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 14:32:29 GMT

One exploded as a journo at a TV station plugged it in to his computer, causing mild injuries to his hand and face. Another sent to a radio station did not explode - the drive was plugged into an extension cord and didn't get enough voltage to detonate.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/journalist-plugs-in-unknown-usb-drive-mailed-to-him-it-exploded-in-his-face/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/03/22/2048210/explosives-replace-malware-as-the-scariest-thing-a-usb-stick-may-hide

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The Charlie Hebdo massacre trial began today in France

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 16:22:49 GMT

Five years ago this January gunmen stormed the office of the satirical cartoon newspaper and slaughtered the people there for daring to publish cartoons of Mohamed. Three of them fled the country and are believed to be in Syria, they are being tried in abstentia. One went on to murder a police officer at a traffic check the next day, then on to murder four at a Jewish market on the day following. The man responsible for the last two attacks was killed in the police storming of the market. Eleven people are on trial for the attack for directly committing it or supporting those that did.

Two of the three who escaped to Syria are believed to have been killed fighting alongside with ISIS. Arrest warrants are outstanding on all three.

The trial is expected to last two and a half months, 150 expert witnesses are to be called.

The phrase Je Suis Charlie, or I Am Charlie, was popularized from this event.

That July my wife and I were celebrating our tenth anniversary by taking a river cruise from Prague to Berlin. We flew in and out of Berlin to spend more time there, whereas the norm was to fly in to the origin city and out of the destination city, so we took a train from Berlin to Prague, a very nice 2 or 3 hour ride. It stopped on the border to change crew and take on more passengers.

On the side of a warehouse-type building was a large graffiti of Je Suis Charlie. It was quite moving.

It will be nice to see justice meted out to these terrorists, and some closure to the survivors of the victims.

Here's an article on the start of the trial, slated to run to mid-November:
https://www.france24.com/en/20200902-charlie-hebdo-terror-attack-accomplices-trial-starts-in-paris

And a cartoon, from the web strip Jesus and Mo:

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