Hezbollah has suffered a hard blow this Tuesday and in a way never seen before. An undetermined number of beepers or pagerswhich The Associated Press puts at hundreds, have erupted simultaneously, causing 9 dead, including an 8-year-old girl, and more than 2,800 injured in different locations in Lebanon and Syria. The extent of the incident is still unknown, as is the way in which it happened, but one can hypothesize how the attack was carried out against the members of Hezbollah. This is a Lebanese political party and also a paramilitary group whose armed wing is considered a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United States, Israel and other countries, including Egypt. It is Israel that the Lebanese government accuses of the operationbut the Israel Defense Forces has preferred not to comment on the incident when asked.
What is a beeper or pager?
A beeper is a telecommunications device that was widely used for receive short text messages before mobile phones became widespread. Also known as a pager, pager or pager. pagerallows a person to receive a notification or alert, usually in the form of a beep or vibration, to indicate that someone is trying to communicate with them.
Messages can be numericindicating that the person should call a specific number, or in some cases, include limited text. The beepers were popular in the 80s and 90sespecially among professionals who needed to be available, such as doctors, emergency technicians and security personnel. With the advent of mobile phones and other forms of instant communication, their use has decreased considerably, but has not disappeared altogether.
Hezbollah uses them, instead of more modern devices, to escape electronic surveillance by their enemies. The pagers do not use the mobile network of the phones but a radio wave transmission technology which can be one-way, just for receiving messages, or two-way, also for sending them. This last feature is only found in the most advanced beepers.
Pagers of a new brand
A Hezbollah official has claimed that The devices were of a new brand that the group had not used before.. They had been recently acquired, after the group’s leader ordered members to stop using mobile phones for avoid being tracked by Israeli intelligence and targeted by attacksAP reports.
The explosions took place at 3:30 p.m. local time at different points in Beirut and Damascusafter the victims began to notice how their devices overheated after receiving a messageIn a statement, the Lebanese government said that “Hezbollah’s specialized scientific and security teams are conducting a large-scale investigation to uncover the reasons behind these simultaneous explosions” which it describes as “mysterious”.
One possibility is that the devices were hacked to overheat their battery until an explosion or small fire occurs. According to the Spanish security expert Yago Jesus in X, “a data parsing error from a received message that overheats the battery, or an unauthorized firmware update which allows the battery to be remotely overheated (overheating, dangerous discharge levels). Either way, it seems plausible to me that the battery explodes”.
My guesses: a data parsing error from a received message overheating the battery, or a rogue firmware update allowing remote battery stress (overheating, dangerous discharge levels). Either way, a battery explosion (similar to e-cigs) seems plausible to me. https://t.co/CWVMovFBSl
— Yago Jesus (@YJesus) September 17, 2024
However, according to the Atlantic Council’s weapons expert Alex Plitsas“A lithium-ion battery fire is one thing, but I have never seen an explosion like this. It looks like a small explosive charge”. Plitsas raises the possibility that Israel was aware of the delivery of the new pagers and could modify them before delivery.
Yehoshua Kaliskya scientist and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank, told AP that another possibility is an electronic pulse “which was sent from afar and burned the devices and caused them to explode. It is not a random action, it was deliberate.”
Marc Riverohead of research at the cybersecurity company Kaspersky, told El País that “the device may have been manipulated at source, before being distributed among users, and having introduced some type of explosive charge that, through specific programming and remotely, causes explosions”.
David Kennedya former intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency, told CNN that the explosions seen in videos circulating online appear to be “too large to be a direct, remote hack that would overload the pager and cause the lithium battery to explode. It is more likely that Israel had human operatives in Hezbollah. The pagers would have been implanted with explosives and would probably only detonate when a certain message was received.“.
The prior manipulation of the devices, with the introduction of small explosive charges, seems to be the most likely hypothesis, pending further investigations to determine the method used.