Beeper as a Weapon

Sineva said:
This is like the electronic equivalent of the tylenol poisoning case or some other mass product tampering,and just as with that event its very likely we will see this repeated somewhere else at some point in the near future.
One could easily imagine the initial chaos resulting even from relatively small numbers of some well known brand of smart phone or laptop being booby trapped in this same sort of way,plus the longer term economic fallout for whichever unfortunate company [or companies] had its products targeted.
The potential is quite terrifying,for instance how big a bang would you get if you pulled this same sort of trick with an EV battery?
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One of the tricks here is that apparently the lithium battery pack was replaceable in the design. So a hostile actor could get ahold of the battery design specs and make a reduced-capacity version with a little kaboom inside, then at some point install the rigged battery into the units. (this basically requires getting a demo sample and having a bit of fabrication workshop available, plus later access to the units to be rigged at say a store level. If you're picking a fight with Israel, don't buy your consumer electronics in Tel Aviv, maybe?)

This IS NOT a case of a deliberately triggered battery thermal runaway. You have lots and lots of warning before one of those causes a lithium battery to "rapidly disassemble" itself all over the parking lot.

Story time: my shooting buddy is a Vietnam vet, at the time of this story he worked as a QA/repair tech at a boutique electronics manufacturer. Maker was doing a run of hand-held gambling devices for a casino in Nevada, about the time the Samsung batteries were first making the news. Company had a whole pallet worth of these things and one started smoking. Everyone else is panicking, my friend dives into the pallet and starts tossing hand-helds out until he finds the smoking one. He drops that into a metal trash can and carries it out to the loading dock before running back inside to make sure there weren't any more units overheating. By the time he'd satisfied himself that there was only the one unit, the unit in the trash can had popped with enough force that they found fragments of it 100 yards away at the far end of the parking lot. Couple weeks later in the investigation debrief teleconference, "So what can you tell me about the time one of these ex..." "RAPIDLY DISASSEMBLED ITSELF..." "There must be a lawyer in your conference room." Much laughter from both conference rooms, followed by a somewhat insulted-sounding "yes".​
 
The Gold Apollo company has released a statement naming BAC Consulting, located in Budapest, Hungary, as the manufacturer of the pagers.

photo_2024-09-18_10-03-27.jpg

Bottom line. The pagers must have been made by a different third party subcontractor, since BAC is rather a consulting company.
 
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I think that in the next day or two we will find out whether or not explosive-charges were used. There are simple forensic chemical tests to detect explosive residues.
 
Indeed. Let's look forward to them.

This quotation from Reuters is very interesting:

Reuters calls and emails to BAC on Wednesday morning were not answered.
Hsu said earlier there had been problems with remittances from the firm.
"The remittance was very strange," he said, adding that payments had come through the Middle East. He did not elaborate further.
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And:
While Hsu was meeting with reporters, police officials arrived at the company. Officials from Taiwan's economy ministry also visited Gold Apollo.

The ministry said in a statement that there was no record of direct pager exports from Taiwan to Lebanon.
Hsu also said Gold Apollo was a victim of the incident and planned to sue the licensee.
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Source:

It would be interesting to learn if that Hungarian company did not really exist.

The BAC website is no longer available:

 
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Scott Kenny said:
So, Israeli .gov impounded the lot of pagers before shipping them on to Lebanon, and the Hezbollah folks weren't smart enough to inspect them before issuing them out to members?
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I thought they just liked wearing things that explode.

I wonder if they were under warranty, although it's questionable whether they'll want a replacement.
 
Scott Kenny said:
One of the tricks here is that apparently the lithium battery pack was replaceable in the design.
Click to expand...

The AP924 pager uses a AA alkaline battery, so we should really stop talking about lithium battery packs as a factor here.

Lebanese authorities are saying a charge of a couple of grams of explosive was built into one of the components on the circuit board. It looks like there are plenty of unexploded examples -- only about 3000 of the 5000 pagers ordered by LH actually exploded. Some were presumably turned off, out of range, or never issued. At this point, I'd assume someone in LH or the Lebanese security service have done a teardown and know where the explosive charge was fitted.

 
yahya said:
Not the AP924 was used in the attack but the AR-924, which uses rechargeable lithium batteries. Please check the mfg. website mentioned above for specs.
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Whoops. Sorry about that.
 
More updates:

www.haaretz.com

After Lebanon blasts, U.S. says 'intense diplomacy' ongoing to avert Israel-Hezbollah war

***
www.haaretz.com www.haaretz.com


www.theyeshivaworld.com

Exploding Pagers Were Made By A Company In Budapest, Taiwan’s Gold Apollo Says

Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday that it authorized its brand on the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria but that another company based in Budapest manufactured them. The AR-924 pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, based in Hungary’s capital, according to a statement...
www.theyeshivaworld.com

abcnews.go.com

Exploding Hezbollah pagers in apparent Israeli attack made by Hungarian company, Taiwanese firm says

A Taiwanese company says that a firm based in Hungary was responsible for manufacturing the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria in an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah’s communications network
abcnews.go.com abcnews.go.com

And an interesting hint:

Iranian authorities, Artesh and IRGC in contrast use only domestically made pagers:

photo_2024-09-18_12-50-19.jpg
 
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www.bbc.com

Gold Apollo: Taiwan pager maker stunned by link to Lebanon attacks

The race to find the manufacturer of pagers that exploded in Lebanon leads to a Taiwanese company.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
Caught in the crisis, Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo's founder Hsu Ching-Kuang flatly denied his company had anything to do with the attacks.
Instead, Mr Hsu has said he licensed his trade mark to a company in Hungary called BAC Consulting to use the Gold Apollo name on their own pagers. BBC attempts to contact BAC have so far been unsuccessful.

“You look at the pictures from Lebanon,” Mr Hsu told reporters outside his firm's offices on Wednesday. "They don’t have any mark saying Made in Taiwan on them, we did not make those pagers!”

Mr Hsu said it was pagers made by BAC Consulting that were used in the Lebanon attacks. He told reporters that his company had signed an agreement with BAC Consulting three years ago.
The money transfers from BAC had been "very strange", he added. There had been problems with the payments, which had come through the Middle East, he told reporters, but he did not go into detail.
Initially, he said, BAC wanted to buy pagers from Gold Apollo to sell in Europe. But after about a year they came up with a new plan to make their own pagers and licensed Gold Apollo's name.
"We only provide brand trademark authorisation and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product,” a statement from Gold Apollo said.
 
Despite the audacity of this raid, the aspect of a potential proliferation and remote copycat actions are alarming.

Yes, the Li battery could have been made remotely explosive with HPMW triggering, for example from a plane. The fact that there was only individual responses among the public suggests that there were some actions to make them reacting to a specific stimuli (or a narrow beam action). But this does not mean that replicating this effect could only be done by patterning the battery response. This hence expose us all to the danger of similar actions being attempted by some groups or individual actors that see that as an opportunity, something that will also impact the industry in a costly attempt to shield their products from such danger...

Just imagine that technology applied to an EV in a city center. We have out there extremists and uninhibited services with HPMW means already (see the Sonic attacks saga).
'
 
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Given any 'domestic' Li-Ion battery is already a 'Thermite Device in Waiting', such that a friend nearly started a hillside brush-fire (*) by crashing his 'small' drone, these 'nobbled' pagers only needed a diminutive initiator to trigger 'pyrotechnic disassembly'.
The wary tear-downs will be interesting...

*) IIRC, it was flown between Scottish down-pours, but he still had to 'Step Lively' to stamp out, suppress the spread...
 
A good commentary from Al Monitor via BBC:

www.bbc.com

Bowen: Tactical triumph for Israel, but Hezbollah won't be deterred

Reports said Israel's planned attack was not used in the way they hoped, and was triggered early.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

Quotation:

The original plan, it says, was for Israel to follow up with devastating attacks while Hezbollah was still reeling. The pager attack, the reports say, was to be the opening salvo in a big escalation - as part of an offensive or perhaps an invasion of southern Lebanon.

But these same reports say that Hezbollah was getting suspicious – forcing Israel to trigger this attack early. So the Israelis have shown they can get into Hezbollah’s communications and shown they can humiliate them, but this attack does not take the region one inch further back from all out war. Instead it pushes it closer.
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web.archive.org

Rugged Pager AR924 - GOLD APOLLO

Rugged Pager AR924 IP67 Dust and WaterproofUp to 85 Days of Battery LifeRechargeable battery with USB-C connector Rugged Pager AR924 IP67 Dust and Waterproof Up to 85 Days of Battery Life Rechargeable battery with USB-C connector Device Feature Compact, 4 […]
web.archive.org
AR924 1.jpg AR924 2.jpg ar924.JPG
 
Thank you. It loads for ages, and the archived website is a bit distorted, but at least now we can access the specs when they are gone from the original website.
 
An interesting new analysis pointing to the British intel involvement in yesterday's attack:


https://twitter.com/x/status/1836328414132818143
View: https://x.com/Lowkey0nline/status/1836328414132818143


A source quotation mentioned that:

the delivery of the pagers had been held up for several months by customs in a Middle Eastern country...
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Well, Jordan is a primary suspect transit country as for now according to sm. Perhaps we will learn more about the pagers' shipment route soon.

The analysis also mentioned that the batteries were swapped for the explosive ones. PETN addition as reported yesterday?
 
TomS said:
Can we move all the exploding pager convo to the "Beeper as a Weapon" thread? it's neither standoff nor guided.

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Yes,its pretty tasteless,and that is putting it very mildly.Basically like describing the hijacked airliners used in the sept 11th attack as "pgms".
The recent events in lebanon were an act of mass product tampering which was clearly intended to cause as many casualties [deaths and injuries] as possible.This is quite literally the very definition of an act of terrorism.
 
Sineva said:
Yes,its pretty tasteless,and that is putting it very mildly.Basically like describing the hijacked airliners used in the sept 11th attack as "pgms".
The recent events in lebanon were an act of mass product tampering which was clearly intended to cause as many casualties [deaths and injuries] as possible.This is quite literally the very definition of an act of terrorism.
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The pagers were only being used by Hezbollah and since they were triggered from standoff range and precisely took out their targets using very little explosive, I think it ticks all boxes and is not an act of terrorism since it killed terrorists.
 
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I am not sure if the pagers and the walkie talkies themselves were rigged with explosives. Maybe a technology exists that allows a small explosive with a remote triggering mechanism to be attached to a lithium battery to overheat it upon receiving a command signal to bring in an explosion? Something like a detonator connected to a loop antenna and treated with high power RF energy.

The destroyed walkie talkie pictured above has a BNC antenna connector. The antenna is a helical without the outer sleeve. Such connectors are used on cheap and older generation HAM radios. More recent walkie talkies use a screw connector for antenna, which is moisture- and waterproof. BNC isn't moisture proof.

SM sources claim that a thousand of walkie talkies and mobile radios were detonated remotely in Lebanon today. It seems that there was another wave of yesterday's attack.
 
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yahya said:
It seems that Hezbollah suspected something was wrong with the pagers.

www.al-monitor.com

Exclusive: Hezbollah suspicions forced Israel to expedite Lebanon pager attack

It was not Israel’s preferred course of action to detonate the pagers ahead of a full-scale war with Hezbollah, but security officials made an 11th-hour decision after at least two Hezbollah members suspected something was amiss with the devices.
www.al-monitor.com www.al-monitor.com

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Probably because the battery wasn't lasting long enough.

Joint Jordanian-Israeli op? Jordan customs holds the units while Mossad swaps the batteries for boomies?

I don't want to believe Hezbollah is stupid enough to buy their pagers in Tel Aviv...
 
Scott Kenny said:
Probably because the battery wasn't lasting long enough.

Joint Jordanian-Israeli op? Jordan customs holds the units while Mossad swaps the batteries for boomies?

I don't want to believe Hezbollah is stupid enough to buy their pagers in Tel Aviv...
Click to expand...

The short battery life should always rise suspicions. The AR-924 specs mentioned that the internal parts including the battery could be user exchanged. This feature was no doubt exploited in yesterday's attack.

If the shipment was indeed made through Jordan, and if Jordan was indeed involved, then the consequences would be dire. Jordan, already badly experienced in the recent years, has become a police state. Doubtful such a pager op could have been run without the knowledge and consent from the top level. We should learn soon what was the shipment route, anyway, so this thread still needs clarification.

I think that Hezbollah were not stupid. The idea to use two-way HAM radios, which they actually did from at least the 1990s, and to use pagers for one-way comms was bright and clever. But they did not suspect the supply chain attack. I presume that the batteries inside the pagers and radios were doctored with explosives, and they were remotely detonated, perhaps from an UAV or ELINT plane. The Icom IC-V82 radio is relatively old. It was introduced around two decades ago. Doubtful they could have got a large shipment of such doctored radios lately. Rather, they had to replace the aging batteries. In such a scenario, they probably asked their member, an Ahmed, to procure them. He contacted his trusted friend, a Samir, who then reached out to a Faisal, who was actually a traitor collaborating with a Yitzhak. And you know how the story ended. Worse if each of the guys got his handsome commission.

Instead of visiting a shop and buying what was on the shelves at the moment, they most likely relied on contacts and large orders. And that was undoubtedly their gravest mistake.

I assume that Hezbollah already knows who supplied the rigged items. Perhaps that individual (or individuals) undergoes enhanced interrogation while we discuss the matter. Tomorrow, the head of Hezbollah is to make public statement on the attack. Hopefully we will learn more details and the culprit.
 
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yahya said:
Tomorrow, the head of Hezbollah is to make public statement on the attack. Hopefully we will learn the culprit.
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We already know they're going to blame Israel. And admittedly, it's a really good bet that it was the Israelis that did this. But that doesn't mean that Israel actually did it. There's probably half a dozen agencies/countries that would happily set up such an attack on Hezbollah, including Russia, US, UK, Israel, possibly Jordan, ... Or a combination of some or all of the the above.

And yes, I do think that parts of the Russian government would work with US or other intelligence agencies to deal with Hezbollah. "Hey, CIA, we have contact looking for new batteries for Hezbollah radios." "Oh, really, KGB SVR? You mind if we give them an explosive present?" "Nyet, Hezbollah is pain in our ass, too!"

(fixed agency name)
 
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Seems that not only pagers and radios exploded in Lebanon, but also an attendance machine:

photo_2024-09-18_17-27-39.jpg
Edit: this was the ZKTeco MB2000 Fingerprint T&A Device made in Ukraine.
zktecoua.com

Fingerprint T&A Device MB2000 - ZKTeco

MB2000 - Ñе ÑнноваÑÑйний пÑодÑкÑ, Ñкий оÑнаÑений вдоÑконаленими ÑеÑнологÑÑми ÑозпÑÐ·Ð½Ð°Ð²Ð°Ð½Ð½Ñ Ð²ÑдбиÑкÑв палÑÑÑв Ñа облиÑÑÑ. ÐÑн пÑдÑÑимÑÑ Ð´ÐµÐºÑлÑка меÑодÑв пеÑевÑÑки, вклÑÑаÑÑи облиÑÑÑ...
zktecoua.com zktecoua.com

Exact location unknown, ie. whether at Hezbollah premises or elsewhere.
 
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