BGU Cyber Security Expert Explains Hezbollah Pager Explosion
BGU Cyber Security Expert Explains Hezbollah Pager Explosion
September 17, 2024
Current events, Homeland & Cyber Security
A pager device and a crowd in Lebanon near a site where Hezbollah members’ pager devices were hacked.
The Jerusalem Post – The mysterious pager explosions on Tuesday, September 17 that wounded over 3,600 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah terrorists, were the result of extensive planning, according to an Israeli cyber expert. The operation, he said, involved embedding components within the pagers that could translate signals into ignition and detonation.
“In the world of cyber, there’s a concept known as the ‘supply chain,'” explained Oleg Brodt, Director of Research, Development, and Innovation at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Cyber Labs, speaking to Maariv.
“Many attacks occur by compromising the supply chain. An electronic device, like a pager, contains numerous components, and each one could be infected with malware. This malware could be designed to raise the device’s temperature, cause a malfunction, ignite it, or even trigger an explosion.”
Brodt noted that this type of operation is familiar in intelligence circles and requires significant cooperation from organizations involved in the manufacturing process. These groups ensure that the malicious components are embedded or replaced without being detected by quality control.
“In such cases, it’s essential to make the changes to the device without raising suspicion during the quality inspection,” he emphasized.
How does a pager explode? One potential method used is a feature known in the cyber world as a “kill switch.” In this scenario, malicious software is designed to detonate the device at a specific time or in response to a particular message sent to the pager.
“It’s possible to set up a non-standard message—something unusual or even gibberish—broadcast to hundreds or thousands of devices at once, causing simultaneous ignition and explosion,” Brodt explained. “The radio waves received by the device are translated into a unique message that triggers a chain of events leading to the explosion.”
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