Exploding pager is next step in hybrid warfare

At least 11 people were killed and some 2,700 wounded in Hezbollah circles in Lebanon and Syria as a new type of pager (pager) was detonated en masse. Accusatory fingers point to Israel, though evidence is lacking. ‘Israel is capable of this,’ security expert Jort Kollerie believes, recalling that the military superpower has detonated cell phones remotely in the past.

It is too early to say for sure what kind of situation is involved. ‘Important question is whether Israel will respond affirmatively to this and thus claim the attack,’ said Kollerie, who works as a strategic advisor at Orange Cyberdefense. ‘With these numbers, it appears that the supply chain may have been compromised or the shipment intercepted. Possibly then the pagers were modified for the purpose of remotely detonating simultaneously via a coded message.’

This action, according to Kollerie, is part of hybrid warfare with the goal, in addition to conventional military aspects, of destabilizing the enemy through fake news, propaganda, sabotage, drones and cyberwarfare. ‘If Israel is behind this, it wants to make it abundantly clear what their clout and capabilities are. But more importantly, how clever the Israelis are at taking out remote targets.’

Targeting killing program

Whether Israel is actually behind the explosions remains a mystery. ‘We still don’t know for sure if Israel is behind this,’ Brigadier General Prof. Han Bouwmeester, Professor of Military-Operational Science at Defense, tries to temper expectations somewhat. ‘The United States, Hezbollah and Lebanon are pointing in the direction of Israel, but Israel itself is silent. Perhaps we will know something more about these explosions in the coming weeks as well.’

Bouwmeester keeps a close eye on the situation with exploding pagers, constantly weighing various considerations. ‘Which parties are involved? What interests are involved? And what know-how techniques are involved? Then it is very plausible to assume that Israel with their so-called ‘targeting killing’ program is behind this.

Gulf

A wave of mini-explosions took place in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, Sept. 17, seemingly aimed at dealing a blow to the militant Lebanese movement Hezbollah. The Israeli secret service Mossad allegedly placed a small amount of explosives in five thousand pagers several months ago. These “pagers” were allegedly ordered by Hezbollah. About three thousand of them exploded simultaneously when a coded message was sent to them.

The pagers were allegedly made by the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo. That denies involvement and points to the Hungarian company BAC Consulting. That company licenses products from Gold Apollo, including an AR924 type pager that triggered the explosions. BAC Consulting did not respond. The company frequently works with governments on projects in war zones and “problem countries. For example, it is working with the Dutch government in an accelerator program in Libya.

More than battery

‘These pagers were probably modified in some way to cause this kind of explosion,’ analyzes research expert Mikko Hypponen of WithSecure in The New York Times. Hypponen is also a cybercrime consultant at Europol. ‘The size and force of the explosion indicate that it wasn’t just the battery.’

Source: Sander Hulsman for Computable.nl