Okay, I deleted a topic about these pagers this morning because it so obviously (to me) had nothing to do with cybersecurity, hacking, or privacy.
And then for whatever reason all I saw the rest of the day on social media were people speculating that someone was able to hack these pagers and make the batteries explode, which is (apparently not-obviously) nonsense.
So since the cybersecurity “experts” of Twitter were confused, for the record: this is not a cyberattack, they were just actual bombs, and your laptop/phone/etc. are not gonna randomly explode from some Stuxnet-esque virus
Maybe not even supply chain security at all.
My guess is they (Mossad*) either intercepted the pager delivery and retrofitted them with explosives or they planned this all out beforehand and had a package of those pagers ready and did a little switcheroo magic along the way somewhere.
*Why do I say Mossad with confidence? They have a history of using explosives to assassinate their enemies:
Which is not really cybersecurity to be clear, just… regular security I guess lol
Also dang they went and did it again with walkie-talkies this time. This whole thing is pretty fucked up, seems like something a government should definitely not be doing
They’re basically deploying distributed weapons of mass destruction.
If anyone else but Israel did this the rest of the world would demand their heads on a plate.
In 2021, a GPS tracker implant was found in an iPhone in Russia. The iPhone was replaced with a smaller battery to create an extra space for the tracker, and reassembled back. This appears to be a specific case rather than a supply chain attack.
We would [also] regularly purchase new laptops and install them with malware, and [then they would] give them away as gifts — completely re-package them.
If the Mossad wants your data, they’re going to use a drone to replace your cellphone with a piece of uranium that’s shaped like a cellphone, and when you die of tumors filled with tumors, they’re going to hold a press conference and say “It wasn’t us” as they wear t-shirts that say “IT WAS DEFINITELY US”
Always watch out for supply chain security for the devices you buy!
This is actually so crazy that other despotic regimes are banging their heads against the wall, screaming “why didn’t I think of that before?!”. No joke btw if you check Twitter/X you’ll see a lot of messages along those lines. Cybersecurity is proving to be absolutely critical, even though a lot of governments downplay its importance and get their entire e-government databases stolen and uploaded to darkweb for free.
It’s more like this is absolutely flat out terrorism and even “despotic” countries wouldn’t think of doing this. Besides this has nothing to do with cybersecurity, it’s supply chain security, possibly sabotage.
It seems highly relevant that a government was able to perform a supply chain attack at this scale and it raises significant questions for the vulnerabilities the rest of our devices have.
To be clear, I don’t think there are secret bombs in our computers or phones, but it demonstrates the vulnerability of devices to sourcing that is invisible to users. Hiding a bomb with a meaningful payload is unlikely to even be possible with small form factor devices but it is easy to imagine other types of attacks that could occur at the hardware level.
Just as we treat open source as a hedge against grossly nefarious behavior, the state of hardware is very proprietary and like a black box.
Can we talk about just how, when pagers and walkie-talkies, are made so compact, happened to have enough extra room, that could happen to fit enough explosives, that were enough to kill so many upon explosion? youre telling me they opened every single device, and managed to find enough room to perfectly fit not only explosives but a receiver that could activate the explosives over city wide distances?
I just think that we should at least consider, whether a certain 3 letter agency that is tight with Israel, that I won’t name, was involved with providing a top secret technology, which is able to turn any device with batteries into literal bombs, using most likely advanced electromagnetic waves. either way, considering batteries are explosive by default, we should be aware this might be very possible.
I’m skeptical whether this same agency’s use of advanced electromagnetic waves, was the reason the helicopter of a certain country’s president, so conveniently, crashed.
Well they made the pagers, so they could put whatever they want in them. A pager is already a comms receiver, so they didn’t have to add anything extra there.
This is not possible to do with regular batteries, they simply don’t have the energy density to create anywhere near this sort of explosion. Maybe some smoke and flames, but a regular battery isn’t going to knock you over and kill you. Imagine how many people Samsung would’ve killed with the Note 7 if batteries were really that dangerous
TL;DR Your electronics are only capable of being a highly explosive bomb if someone puts a highly explosive bomb inside them.
They would need physical access to your batteries to cause them to explode, so if that’s the case, you should be more concerned about other issues rather than your battery.
You can have your reasoning, but my reasoning is that simply Israel isn’t that guy. This level of methodical interception/intelligence, then on top of that, quick engineering, is levels of IQ I don’t see Israel having. What Israel does have, is very tight relationship with a certain 3 letter agency that has the top secret technology to turn anything into a weapon. Weren’t there reports of solar pannel technology also exploding as collateral?
You couldn’t be more wrong. Israel’s Mossad is (in)famous for doing these kind of assasinations over the last decades. Check the link I posted earlier in this thread.
