Hack of Hezbollah Devices Exposes Dark Corners of Asia Supply Chains (msn.com)
- Reference: 0175092727
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/09/20/1651257/hack-of-hezbollah-devices-exposes-dark-corners-of-asia-supply-chains
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/analysis-hack-of-hezbollah-devices-exposes-dark-corners-of-asia-supply-chains/ar-AA1qTGuv
Taiwan-based Gold Apollo blamed a European licensee for the compromised pagers, while Japan's Icom could not verify the authenticity of the walkie-talkies bearing its name. Both companies denied manufacturing the deadly components in their home countries. Industry executives say older electronics from Asia often lack the tight supply chain controls of newer products, making it difficult to trace their origins. Counterfeiting, surplus inventories, and complex manufacturing deals further complicate the issue.
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/17/1721229/exploding-pagers-injure-thousands-across-lebanon
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/18/1522246/walkie-talkies-solar-energy-systems-explode-across-lebanon-in-second-wave-after-pager-attack
[3] https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/analysis-hack-of-hezbollah-devices-exposes-dark-corners-of-asia-supply-chains/ar-AA1qTGuv
Also lack of quality control by the customer (Score:1, Interesting)
Anybody that buys cheap electronics from Asia should know that you need to have a careful look at what you are getting. Fire hazards, electrocution hazards, explosion hazards (without actual explosives) are common and are non-functional, partially functional and unreliable products. That is not to say all Asian suppliers are bad. You can get good products even from China and it is not even hard. But you need to make sure. That quality control was obviously not done, but I bet it will be done now.
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And why would this get modded down? I see some useful idiot got mod-points by accident. Again.
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Got any more mod-points to waste, dumbfucks? Because I am still posting at +1, despite your dishonorable and dishonest efforts. I wonder why that is.
This could happen to anyone anywhere at any time (Score:2, Flamebait)
..and that's what's most chilling about this to me.
What's to stop some enemy of the U.S. doing this to us?
For that matter: what's to stop Israel from doing things like this to anyone, anywhere -- even us ?
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It wouldn't make sense for someone to attempt this sort of attack against random people, because it's much too difficult and sophisticated. So it would be attempted only against a military target.
I would hope that Western militaries X-ray, disassemble, and examine in minute detail samples of anything they procure before distributing it in the field.
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The Israelis haven't caused damage to American targets on that scale since the USS Liberty incident in 1967. As for other possible aggressors, it would be easy for China to attempt such an attack on pretty much anyone.
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What a strange worry. Are you a terrorist buying a pager and a walky-talky to avoid being located via GPS as you fire missiles at civilians?
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Fuck you.
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Is that a Yes or a No?
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Fuck off.
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What a strange worry. Are you a terrorist buying a pager and a walky-talky to avoid being located via GPS as you fire missiles indiscriminately at Israeli children and civilians?
The main export item from middle-east is islamic terrorism.
Re: This could happen to anyone anywhere at any ti (Score:2)
How many kids died in Iraq for non-existent weapons of mass destruction? What's your main export??
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I doubt he is, but he could be buying a car with a cell phone module manufactured in China. The pagers started shipping in May of 2022 which is over 2 years ago. So if someone can wait two years, they could wait 5 and only trigger if they thought useful. And if not, never trigger. I see this as a pretty scary event that Israel managed to pull off. Israel is pretty good at covert ops, but I have to believe others are too. Look at Vlad, he has pulled off some pretty impressive poisonings on foreign soil as ju
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> For that matter: what's to stop Israel from doing things like this to anyone, anywhere -- even us ?
Easy - they need us to pay for a significant part of their annual national budget. We give them billions in cash, every year.
Re: This could happen to anyone anywhere at any ti (Score:2)
Israel national budget: $125B
US aid for Israel: $4.5B
Go back to Gab with your lies, Adolf
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It’s quite a bit more. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I’ve had enough of my taxes go towards Israel blowing up brown people. Let them fund it themselves.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Israel_in_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war
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> For that matter: what's to stop Israel from doing things like this to anyone, anywhere -- even us ?
A good motive.
No, you don't qualify.
Positive fallout? (Score:2)
Every self-respecting organisation will now want to open and verify their purchases to see if there's no tampering being done with the hardware in manufacturing or in transit. I hope this will boost the 'repairability' factor needed. One can only verify a product if it can be opened and put together again. Like, for example, the fairphone. While this has been a human tragedy for all the victims involved, maybe there will be some positive influence on the long term?
Yes, I'm an optimist...
Hezbollah seems clueless (Score:2)
Hey Abdul! Some guy named Shlomo Goldberg just got me a great price on pagers!
Awesome, buy them, and make sure our technician Hyman Katzenberg takes a good look at them first!
Blockchain for supply chain (Score:3)
Forget about cryptocurrency ledgers, the best use of a blockchain is for supply chain verification. It would be easy for each creator of the initial inputs to say where they went when they sell the item. The next company up the food chain would take inputs and make something else. If I buy a product I should be able to verify where all the inputs came from. I should be able to check that the metals didn't come from some conflict mine, that the oil wasn't from a deforested jungle, that the assembly of some parts weren't slave labor. It's not perfect. There could be fraud but it would require multiple actors working together to commit the fraud. It also might catch contract manufacturers who swap in cheap components.
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This incident is precisely one of the scenarios where blockchain fails: just don't add the explosives to the ledger then final assembly then ship. This does NOT "require multiple actors working together to commit the fraud."
Supply chain (Score:2)
The supply chain has always been compromised by state level actors.
Both the United States and China are known to intercept networking gear and modify it for their own purposes. Companies like Cisco, Lucent, Motorola have all had this done at various points in time. No fake manufacturers required.
The only thing new in this case is the scale.
the most moral army (Score:1)
Kills civilians indiscriminately. Also, hizbulla said older pagers were fine. It's the newer ones that blew up
American market (Score:2)
So, when are we going to get a copycat version of this and have someone claim that one of these made it to the American soil and killed an American citizen or god forbid a white American child?
Terrorists shopping on the Internet (Score:2)
Hezbollah's fighting strength is similar to the Army of South Africa. But it is not a nation-state. It is just a bunch of goons that shop on the internet and do not seem to have the cognizance or where-with-all to vet their suppliers. Sure technically the exploding electronics were a supply-chain issue, but most corporations and governments do a better job of vetting their suppliers. Israel not only built these things, they managed via tools like Google-Ads to convince the Hezbollah buyer they had the b
Genius (Score:4, Interesting)
I read somewhere that the pagers were sold by a shell company controlled by Israel. This means that not only did they infiltrate Hezbollah catastrophically, but Hezbollah paid for the privilege. This was a genius-level operation.
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Yep, current theory floating around in the news is that the EU company that licensed the design from Gold Apollo is actually a Mossad shell company. Basically set themselves up as a legit mfg/distributor and used that to sell the pagers to Hezbollah. They would have been planning this for ages. Explains how they were able to get 3000+ devices ready and in Hezbollah's hands when they needed them. That would also mean they were able to build them from the ground up instead of buying and modifying existing sto
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Are you sure Mossad was really careful to make sure none of those products ended up anywhere else? Are you certain that they didn't put bombs in any other gear? And can anyone say with confidence that now it's a proven tactic, nobody else is going to try it?
This is a massive problem for supply chains and for distribution. How much more are you willing to pay for certified chains of custody that give you confidence that thing won't blow you up?
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But certifying the supply chain could cause prices to increase... and we can't have that!
I can't see a Walmart ad, where the smiley face bounces around the store adding "certified supply chain!" to their price labels, getting much traction.
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It's going to happen whether you like it or not. Businesses with demand it to cover their arses. Look at the damage being done to the companies that made these devices, and the ones that were in the supply chain.
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Certifying the supply chain would do nothing but make prices go up, do you really think a spy agency doesn't have the resources to fake a certification. That is exactly what spies do, their main job skill is to lie effectively.
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> How much more are you willing to pay for certified chains of custody that give you confidence that thing won't blow you up?
How much more is some company willing to charge for pseudo-certified chains of custody that give you false confidence? That's the really scary question.
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Imagine some big supplier like Mouser or Digikey was involved in this. Some product they supplied turned out to have a Mossad or North Korean or terrorist (but I repeat myself) bomb in it. There are other suppliers who sell the same stuff, people have a choice.
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> This is a massive problem for supply chains and for distribution. How much more are you willing to pay for certified chains of custody that give you confidence that thing won't blow you up?
It's probably less "supply chain" and more the counterfeiting rings associated with manufacturing.
You know, counterfeiting exists - sometimes also called third shift protection. Devices that don't pass QA and get tossed, or a secret production run of devices done using the same tooling and molds and everything, but using
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> Are you sure Mossad was really careful to make sure none of those products ended up anywhere else? Are you certain that they didn't put bombs in any other gear? And can anyone say with confidence that now it's a proven tactic, nobody else is going to try it?
And the TSA bans pagers and radios, etc... in 3... 2... 1...
Re: Genius (Score:2)
Israel has the right to defend itself. With intelligence operations like this has been called in our media.
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The shell company was legit manufacturing & selling them before the larger order came in. They were selling them to other customers, probably other terrorist orgs as well. This was a massive undertaking setting up a legit company and just waiting for them to switch to low tech. This could have been a huge waste of time. Who knows what else Mossad is doing out there waiting for the strategy to win.
The thing that worries me (Score:2)
Is wondering how many pagers got into the hands of people who weren't Hezbollah. Never mind issues with setting off explosives basically at random.
You can bet there was a lot of civilian injuries here. Western media isn't going to cover them for obvious reasons but this was really a fucked up thing to do and is only going to keep the fighting going longer.
That is of course the point. As soon as the fighting stops people are going to start asking why the fighting started in the first place. They're g
Re:Genius (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, evil genius. There is the little problem with killing children and civilians and generally making the world a less safe place.
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The Mossad doesn't give a rat's ass about that, as long as they aren't Israeli citizens, as far as I can tell.
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Reminds me of the stance that some historical German organizations had.
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Reminds me of the stance that every nation that ever went to war had.
Those German organizations did give a rat's ass about killing civilians and children they actively tried to kill them, they specifically rounded them up and killed them even once they where captive.
That is the key difference here, Jews where never an active threat to Germans in any way shape or form, their goal was to eliminate all Jews. Here Israel may want the land, but if every Palestinians packed up their bags an left, and the stopped
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They're too busy worrying about the several dozen children deliberately murdered on Oct 7, I guess.
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Frankly, while the Israel - haters out there seem to forget that 7 October happened, I think the Mossad is more concerned with killing than with mourning the dead.
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"Captain Doolittle was more concerned with bombing Japan than mourning the dead"
what even is this, of course they are, that's their job!
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The Israel haters do more than ignore Oct 7. They ignore the entire history book while gloating about Oct 7 being a victory for Islam and DEI programs. We're not dealing with the brightest people in human history. I remember back 30 years ago when Palestinian 'journalists' would get slapped down for blatantly trying to frame Israel for what is business as usual for Hamas. Now, those journalists are editors and fact checkers in the EU.
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Perhaps they're mourning the dead by killing the terrorists.
Not that Israel doesn't have plenty of blood on their hands, too. There's no good guys on any side.
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For context, wars usually have about 50% civilian casualty ratio, which can easily go up to 90% for urban warfare. If this boils over to a war, the civilian casualty ratio will be dramatically higher than the pager/walkie-talkie operation. And it will be worse than the usual ratio, for obvious reasons.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio
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thanks for the info. I was not aware the civilian casualty rate was so high, but then again in recent years it has often seemed that far more civilians have been killed than soldiers/combatants.
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That is largely because recent conflicts tend to have the military too close to the civilians, also battle lines move too quickly to evacuate civilians before they're in a combat zone, and rocket and artillery ranges are longer then ever (inaccurate + explosive).
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in much of modern combat there are no traditional 'battle lines' at all, for example, in the US's recent forays into Iraq/Afghanistan you can be driving through a 'pacified' or 'friendly' village and still be attacked. This lack of traditional battle lines places civilians in harm's way, plus, the attackers frequently look just like the non-combatants, if you took away their weapons.
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to be clear, I am in no way praising the Mossad in my previous reply to you, far from it!
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I am clear on that. You merely stated what is likely a fact.
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In the past, I had heard rumors that the Mossad had withheld intelligence that affected the USA as well. Not sure if those rumors are true or not, but I do have my opinions, in this case, uneducated opinions, though I try to not have those as often as possible.
But yeah, minimizing collateral damage (what a asinine euphemism!) seems to be of very little importance to several Nations out there. And of course, as demonstrated by these actions of the past few days.
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> The civilians are not just complicit, they are fully part of the Hez war effort.
> No one is innocent.
Lebanon is on the verge of being a "failed state"; Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization, controls less than half of the parliament, but basically all of the military power; and you think the entire population of civilians are complicit in anything they do and are fair game to be killed because of it?
I cannot find the words to express my disdain for your total lack of human empathy. Anonymous Coward is right.
Re: Genius (Score:2)
If you can walk around with a pager on your hip that is registered to a terrorist organization, in public...
I'm pretty sure it's already a failed state.
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Hezbollah doesn't seem to have a "problem with killing children and civilians", so my sympathy for those Hezbollah people affected in those attacks is zero.
I have sympathy for people who were collateral damage, but as far as attacks go, this one probably had the lowest ratio of collateral to intentional damage of pretty much any counter-terrorism action in recent years.
Re:Genius (Score:5, Interesting)
> this one probably had the lowest ratio of collateral to intentional damage of pretty much any counter-terrorism action in recent years
That is because for example the US has repeatedly committed mass-murder of civilians in "counter-terrorism" in the past. Being less of a war-criminal is really not a great achievement and does not make the actions taken ok.
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So, people at a wedding that had no clue who else got invited, for example? You are a real Unmensch, nothing else.
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I do not weep for the Hitler Youth, and neither should you.
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The former Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth, presumedly against his will.
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When Hezbollah et:al decide to stop calling for the complete obliteration of Israel, we can talk. Till then no so much.
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Yeah, the Islamic terrorists do a lot of that, the killing of children and civilians.
There's no one involved on any side who doesn't have the blood of children on their hands.
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Yes. But Israel pretends to be a civilized nation. With its current leadership, it is not.
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And? Their choice is to kill their enemies, or face literal genocide (the openly stated goal of the other side).
That's their choice, and that's the choice Hamas and Hezbollah have made.
Both sides deliberately provoke the other side to violence, and have for decades, for their own benefit.
Israel needs the external threat to suppress their own internal dissent. Without it, their society would tear itself apart within a generation.
The terrorists groups, all of them, simply cease to exist without Israel to atta
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Ah, yes, "The enemy forced us to do it!". That time-honored lie. Perfected, incidentally, by the 3rd Reich.
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Lets play a game. We'll send you to both sides and have you criticize both while wearing a pride shirt. Lets see which one makes you disappear. Bonus points if you go to a peace festival in Israel. They don't have those in Gaza. Although, they do have a lot of open space now.
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Nearly everyone killed were Hezbollah and their children. As an alternative, how many children and actual civilians would have died in a traditional bombing to take out one member?
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So you approve of killing children, merely because of who their parents are? The Germans liked to do that too.
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They still do as long as you're a Muslim killing the local natives. The news will just blame far "right" people in a very vague way.
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Don't blame the Mossad for Hezbollah's wrongdoings.
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I mean, have you been to the middle east? Or read a news article from the last 7 decades, or the just the last 7 weeks?
You can't call for Israel to pull punches when their adversaries not only want to A) kill everyone in Israel and regularly call for genocide against all Israelis, B) actually kidnap and murder civilians in an armed incursion, C) use suicide bombs to kill Israeli civilians on a regular basis, D) use their own people as human shields.
There's no clean fighting in the Middle East.
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Or Britain now either.
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> Well, evil genius. There is the little problem with killing children and civilians and generally making the world a less safe place.
Still it was MUCH more controlled that raining bombs or missiles to target that many terrorists.....in war you're always going to have collateral damage.
In this case it was radically minimized.
Re: Genius (Score:2)
Excuse me, those kids *could* have grown up into terrorists. See, like Madeleine Albright said, we feel it's worth it to secure peace and democracy.
Now, if *other* countries do it, well, then, that's just not fair. And against peace and democracy.
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Oct 7 was actually Hamas. But Hezbollah is no better.
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No argument about that. But the rules of civilized warfare and morality say that if you copy a murderous enemy, you just become murderous yourself.
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I don't think the pager attack was in any way, shape or form a copy of the October 7th attack.
Pager attack was targeted and the vast majority of people hit in the attack were the ones being targeted. October 7th was an indiscriminate rampage, with the vast majority of victims being civilians.
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Did Israel enter Lebanon, murder a crowd at a peace and love music festival, rape women and children, then kidnap 200 Lebanese?
Damn, I thought they just targeted attacks at terrorists.
Well, no I'm convinced! Israel is definitely evil. Thanks for your help.
Was that Lebanon? (Score:2)
> Did Israel enter Lebanon, murder a crowd at a peace and love music festival, rape women and children, then kidnap 200 Lebanese?
> Damn, I thought they just targeted attacks at terrorists.
> Well, no I'm convinced! Israel is definitely evil. Thanks for your help.
Was that Lebanon? I thought the attack was from the Gaza strip.
I thought the Gaza strip people were Hamas, and Lebanon people were Hisbollah, and that these people are different, have different cultures, and certain specific cultural points that lead to intense disagreements between the two peoples. (Although their interests sometimes align.)
Damn! I really need to go back and review the [1]handbook of terrorists [state.gov] and get things straight.
[1] https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2019/
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You do not understand how "morals" works, do you? Here is a hint: It does not allow you to do to others what they did to you. That is called "revenge" and generally considered to be a base impulse that is not helpful.
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Very true. But sometimes, if you don't copy them, you just die.
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In this case, no. In the general case, the question becomes how much of a monster you are willing to be in order to survive.
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Well...at least they try to target hostile enemies. I don't recall Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or any Palestinian trying to avoid civilian targets. In fact, historically, they prefer soft targets. Oct 7 was openly celebrated as a brave and noble attack by Israel's critics. When Hamas is classified as being made up of unarmed but maybe explosive pregnant women and children, I question the honesty of people saying both groups use the 'same' tactics.
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I guess that one weakness that was exploited was that all the equipment were single sourced. That makes sense from a control standpoint however once Israel figured out the source, they could use that weakness. Someone said that a side benefit of the attacks is target identification. Anyone that has was recently injured is now suspected of being part of Hezbollah. Before, it was difficult to know who might be using a Hezbollah pager. Now Israel can figure would who visited a hospital recently due to a pager
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> I guess that one weakness that was exploited was that all the equipment were single sourced. That makes sense from a control standpoint however once Israel figured out the source, they could use that weakness. Someone said that a side benefit of the attacks is target identification. Anyone that has was recently injured is now suspected of being part of Hezbollah. Before, it was difficult to know who might be using a Hezbollah pager. Now Israel can figure would who visited a hospital recently due to a pager explosion.
This attack looks spectacular but it really kind failed. The Israelis got something like 5000 of these pagers and a seemingly fairly small number of radios into Lebanon before (according to Israel) some Hezbolal radio nerd opened one up, found the explosives and 'they had to use the capability or loose it' (according to the Israelis). So far the casualty rate does not seem to have topped 3000 with very few fatalities and a whole lot of Hezbollah members don't seem to have been too badly injured. One of the
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and vice versa...
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> This was a genius-level operation.
Not really.
They were supposed to blow them as they invaded Lebanon but a tech in Lebanon reverse-engineered it and as soon as Israel got word they'd been found out they sent the blow code because it was more to their advantage.
The Lebanese were overly cautious about their analysis.
This is why so many children and other civilians were injured and killed.
Israel was not done trying to goad the DC Mafia into fighting their war in Iran (election concerns) so the opportunity
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Respectfully, evidence / news / link?
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[1]https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-conducted-lebanon-pager-attack-fearing-hezbollah-was-onto-the-operation/ar-AA1qKwwG?ocid=BingNewsVerp
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Thanks!
So, we mostly agree on the facts. But, the "tech[nician] in Lebanon" was not mentioned. The article said that at least two Hezbollah members suspected something was amiss with the devices. One of them could have been a/the technician. I’m just curious whether someone spilled the beans (first) or Hezbollah actually found out upon inspection (first).
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It's concerning that Israel is willing to injure or kill civilians to get at its enemies in countries that it is at war with. Can you imagine if they bombed a hotel in your town where they claimed a Hezbollah "commander" was staying?
Don't blame Lebanon for not kicking them out. Lebanon couldn't if they wanted to, and if they did it would be about 8 seconds before Israel annexed part of their country and sent settlers there.
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> Can you imagine if they bombed a hotel in your town
They bombed one where the British administrators for Palestine were headquartered. Just to destroy some documents that incriminated the WZO in terrorist attacks.
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Could Nasrallah is the mole. He has been the one encouraging Hezbollah to ditch their mobiles in favor of Pagers for 2 years now.
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> I read somewhere that the pagers were sold by a shell company controlled by Israel. This means that not only did they infiltrate Hezbollah catastrophically, but Hezbollah paid for the privilege. This was a genius-level operation.
If so, I would hope they set things up so they could also read/hear/whatever was being transmitted/received -- which would mean they would have known about Oct 7 in advance and/or have other intelligence. Maybe this isn't technically feasible, but if it was and they didn't do it then it was a huge missed opportunity.
Re: Genius (Score:2)
No, that's Russia. Israel has the right to defend itself.
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Yup. Full of pagers everywhere. Even my dog has one! /s
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Look. A lot of stuff could have been weaponized, and to be honest cell phones are probably among the most difficult things to weaponize. There's simply not enough room inside a modern smartphone to properly weaponize it. Components are very, VERY tightly squeezed in there.
As for other items, yes, of course they "could" be transformed into bombs, and it very rarely happens, like those pressure cookers in the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013.
So why doesn't it happen more often? Because it's way too much