Beeper as a Weapon

TomcatViP said:
Do you really believe that a terrorist organization is not primarily a criminal one riddled with the usual corruptions and paybacks?

Reuters made a portrait of one of the infamous individual. Not much but still:

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I rather wanted to point out the poor OPSEC of the organization and the very relaxed approach to security. The procedure to obtain the pagers and the radios came out to be moronic.

Meanwhile, the cover-up continues:


But at least we have an analysis of the attack by the competent independent experts:

Pager

www.cryptomuseum.com www.cryptomuseum.com

And there is a reference to an X profile and a recording of a damaged IC-V82, which suggests that the explosive charge was installed in the area of the speaker of the radio. Hence, the speaker was torn off the radio after explosion.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1836414674172285007
View: https://x.com/NikhilCh_/status/1836414674172285007https://x.com/NikhilCh_/status/1836414674172285007
 
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yahya said:
A photo from sm of an AR-924 with a USB cable ruptured by explosion in Lebanon.

View attachment 741556

If anyone has a PDF manual for this pager, please post it here.
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Now that's what I expect a walkie-talkie to look like after explosives are through with it---photos of others showed much more left of the walkie-talkie as in the post immediately above mine---maybe varying amounts of explosives were loaded into each device depending on the everyday habits of the targets?

Less for one who likes to gather/shop in public--more for loners?

IEDs personalized just for YOU
 
There are circumstantial and dispersed information circulating on sm regarding the developments in Hezbollah's domestic investigation on the pager and walkie-talkie attacks last week. While these may be inaccurate and distorted, nevertheless I will summarize them below.

1. Hezbollah allegedly found six culprits within their own ranks, who were engaged in purchases of the electronics, which later exploded. These individuals admitted that for the twenty percent 'commission' they agreed to acquire the pagers and other electronics from certain US (?) businessmen via the Czech Republic and Cyprus. What happened later to these six culprits we can only imagine.

2. In addition to that, dozens of other Hezbollah members were investigated by the organization on the grounds that they were engaged in negotiations and maintained correspondence with the shell companies, and authorized a dozen of contracts. The electronics were delivered by shell companies in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania. We can imagine that the management of these shell companies has already fled to safety. Allegedly, the escape route was via Bulgaria and the Sofia International Airport.

3. The management of the shell companies allegedly took flights to Britain and Bergamo, and then escaped to the US.

4. On Monday, it is believed that the Bulgarian Parliament shall debate the (intentional) inertia of Bulgarian security in the incident.

5. Hungary and Bulgaria refused to conduct official investigations against the known companies, which they claim were only intermediaries that did not intend to harm anyone.

Bottom line

Perhaps these revelations will be further elaborated in the next days by the media and the inaccuracies will be clarified. It is obvious that the cover-up operation can be still ongoing and on a large scale. It seems that a number of intel agencies were engaged in last week's events in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and not only from a country that was suspected first.
 
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PMN1 said:
having his pacemaker chaged??
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A bit OT but in regards to someone like Cheney who's fitted with an ICD not a pacemaker you wouldn't need to have one with a built in explosive-charge. Assuming it's got a remote wireless datalink for monitoring the patient then all you need to do is load some malware to give a massive jolt at the wrong time and just stop the targets heart.
 
With regards to pace-makers and eg 'deaf' implants...
When our local hospital's associated Neuro unit got a big MRI upgrade, a nearby path proved to now be too near, so was fenced off, re-routed. Then re-routed yet further away. Then blocked completely...
 
yahya said:
According to the article from the link below, the AR-924 deal was worth 1.6 million EUR. Considering that Hezbollah purchased 5000 sets, then a unit price would be 320 EUR. That is grossly overpaid considering that it was a wholesale deal and the real value of pagers on the retail market.

www.firstpost.com

How are Kerala-born techie and Hungarian businesswoman involved in Lebanon pager blasts?

A multinational investigation into the deadly pager blasts in Lebanon, which killed dozens and injured over 3,000, has led authorities to Hungarian businesswoman Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono and Kerala-born Norwegian tech entrepreneur Rinson Jose. Both are now under scrutiny for their roles in...
www.firstpost.com www.firstpost.com

I can’t believe that they accepted the deals with murky companies, which were not generally known to have been established on the commo gear market. There must have been either a desperation to get the pagers from somewhere, especially the manually programmable ones like the AR-924, or a tendency to get out a commission from any kind of deals. Or both.
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Weren't these using a Hezbollah-proprietary pager network?

You'd think that'd drive the costs up.
 
I don’t agree that it would drive the costs up except due to the sticky hands of some greedy personnel. We shall assume that Hezbollah already possessed the POCSAG transmitters in Beirut and elsewhere eg. working at 453 MHz, and the associated control infrastructure (a PC to type in the messages or the PSTN gateway, and a UPS). They only needed the pagers. They were undoubtedly attracted by the nice feature of the Appolo Gold pagers that they can be hand programmed by the end user contrary to the proprietary software and programming tools needed to set up the older Motorola pagers. Still, 320 EUR per unit while buying 5000 sets is a grossly exaggerated cost. In the end, they were the victims of an intel coup due to their negligence of basic OPSEC rules. That indeed came very costly.

We do not know if the pager transmitters located most likely on top of Beirut‘s skyscrapers and on comm towers in the mountains were destroyed in the recent days or if they are still operational. The POCSAG works in such a way that there is always an unmodulated wave being transmitted at all times so that the users could check on the signal strength meter on their pagers if they are within the range of the system. Hence, the transmitters can be easily pinpointed using the direction finding (DF) techniques. The messages are unencrypted. In fact, the system is really SIGINT-friendly. It’s a treasure to keep an eye on it.
 
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Snark:
By the time the deal was processed via friends of friends of friends, each taking a commission or 'introduction' fee to cover their so-moderate expenses, the complexities of money-laundering tax-mitigating shell-companies would seem kindergarten stuff., akin to the Covid mask-sourcing mark-up debacle(s)..,
/
 
Iran checks its commo gear after the Lebanon exploding pager and walkie-talkie attacks. Most of these devices were reportedly either homemade or imported from China and Russia.

Interestingly:

IRGC officials have reached out to Hezbollah for technical assessments, and several examples of exploded devices have been sent to Tehran for examination by Iranian experts.
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I wish they shared more details of their investigation.

Source:
 
Grey Havoc said:
Hard to say at the moment.
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It has no doubt drawn a lot of unwanted attention from foreign countries and intelligence agencies, no doubt the PRC will be paying close attention and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Iran decides to investigate it.
 
It's getting more and more interesting:

Norwegian police have issued an international search request for Rinson Jose, a Norwegian-Indian man linked to the sale of pagers to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that exploded last week, they said on Thursday.
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It reminds the worldwide search for the culprits of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh's assassination, when only small-timers were apprehended.

en.wikipedia.org

Assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
NMaude said:
A bit OT but in regards to someone like Cheney who's fitted with an ICD not a pacemaker you wouldn't need to have one with a built in explosive- just stop the targets heart.
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He always did have a bad heart—and a bum ticker too.

In post 104 here was a diagram of two cans and a string :)

—then I saw this:
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zUqPqg2jjro
en.m.wikipedia.org

Speaking tube - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

This may have pushed Hezbollah to go low-tech.

Israel could not stage the attacks without tipping their hand—this being a surprise you can only utilize once…everything is back to square one.

Iran will have to consider even loyal intel assets compromised at this point…which may mean a greater push for ballistic missiles.

Norway is risky for Mossad contacts after a botched operation that killed a waiter back in 1973:

Israel should really change its name to "New Bastogne."

Nuts...
 
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We’ve all heard tales of bugs behind pictures…even landlines.

But a bug is a transmitter…as is a cordless phone or handie-talkie.

Instead of explosives, might’n it have been better to slip cell-phone tech inside to turn the unit into a transponder and attack by other means without tipping your hand?

How could a bug detector be of use if it is put inside a bigger transmitter that might always light up the detector anyway?
 
publiusr said:
Instead of explosives, might’n it have been better to slip cell-phone tech inside to turn the unit into a transponder and attack by other means without tipping your hand?
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Given the recent revelations that Mossad had been planning this for 15 years I've no doubt they thought long and hard about that issue.
 
publiusr said:
We’ve all heard tales of bugs behind pictures…even landlines.

But a bug is a transmitter…as is a cordless phone or handie-talkie.

Instead of explosives, might’n it have been better to slip cell-phone tech inside to turn the unit into a transponder and attack by other means without tipping your hand?

How could a bug detector be of use if it is put inside a bigger transmitter that might always light up the detector anyway?
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Many of the descriptions of the op include data gathering about where people were going, so there definitely were bugs inside the pagers and radios.
 
The old radio loop atop vans could give you triangulation IIRC…but that can’t follow everyone…
 
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publiusr said:
The new old radio loop atop vans could give you triangulation IIRC…but that can’t follow everyone…
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Cell phones can get you down to which 2-3 towers you're using.

Not sure what infrastructure beepers used, but a separate cell phone as the transmitter would give you very good details even without GPS.

Then you add a bluetooth connection to see who is around you that doesn't have a beeper...
 
Scott Kenny said:
Not sure what infrastructure beepers used, but a separate cell phone as the transmitter would give you very good details even without GPS.

Then you add a bluetooth connection to see who is around you that doesn't have a beeper..
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That would no doubt involve some fairly powerful computers with specialist software to do that kind of statistical analysis.
 
NMaude said:
That would no doubt involve some fairly powerful computers with specialist software to do that kind of statistical analysis.
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Not really. The cell phone companies can do the tower triangulation as a matter of course. As in, give them a warrant if it's in the US and they'll do it for you.

As to the bluetooth, as I understand it, every bluetooth device talks to every other BT device around it all the time, and part of the BT handshake is "this device's UID is _____". Which may also be tied to whatever the user named their device.
 
The effectiveness of electronic explosive mechanisms decreases after their first use, a paramilitary organization can survive and continue to operate (albeit more slowly) by more primitive means of communication, as was done in the past. But it can't survive new AI-generated image recognition systems. In 2012, the AlexNet algorithm surpassed humans in recognizing cat images by collecting images provided for free by millions of people. This technology was soon used for intelligence purposes and Israel relied on it to develop its Red Wolf, Blue Wolf and Wolf Pack surveillance systems for facial recognition of potential enemies. Iran also uses a similar algorithm to ensure compliance with hijab laws.
 

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Justo Miranda said:
This technology was soon used for intelligence purposes and Israel relied on it to develop its Red Wolf, Blue Wolf and Wolf Pack surveillance systems for facial recognition of potential enemies.
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Any links on this "Wolf" technology?

Justo Miranda said:
Iran also uses a similar algorithm to ensure compliance with hijab laws.
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Somehow this misuse of AI tech by religious fanatics doesn't surprise me.
 
NMaude said:
Any links on this "Wolf" technology?



Somehow this misuse of AI tech by religious fanatics doesn't surprise me.
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Hi

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/n...recognition-technology-to-entrench-apartheid/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...87bf42-26b2-11ec-8739-5cb6aba30a30_story.html

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/...ed-use-facial-recognition-automated-apartheid

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/2...c-wolves-helps-to-terrorise-the-palestinians/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/19/idf-facial-recognition-surveillance-palestinians

https://danesjenovdan.si/en/killer-ai-or-killer-states/

https://www.medianama.com/2023/05/223-report-israel-red-wolf-facial-recognition-system-palestinians/
 

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Somebody made an hilarious play-on-words with "beeper" in a post that was deleted. I can't remember it, somebody help ?
 
Sorry, the last info to the deleted posts was incomplete.
9 posts were deleted, because they were OT to the original topic, had started a general discussion about the Gaza conflict and were going heavily into politics.
This thread is about beeper, Walkie-Talkies used as remotely triggered weapons,
NOT an excuse to hijack it for discussing other themes, as tempting it may be !
 

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