Lebanon now hit with deadly walkie-talkie blasts as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war First it was pagers, now Lebanon is being rocked by Hezbollah's walkie-talkies detonating across the country, leaving more than a dozen dead. The Lebanese state-run National News Agency reported multiple people were taken to hospital in the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon today after their "wireless communications" …
The BAOR were seriously considering nuclear landmines heated by chickens not long ago…
That at least should be easy enough to check up on; go looking for interesting peaks with a gamma spectroscope such as a Radiacode 103 device. Such devices can be linked to mobile phones and used as compact survey devices with the only activity required being for the user to walk around the area to be searched. The distinctive spectrums of both enriched uranium and plutonium can be detected and discerned using such a device.
That's a lot harder than you may realise.
These materials are primarily alpha emitters and as the results in major ports have shown, there are way too many false positives (especially from banana shipments) to be viable - especially if the IDF installed a bunch of decoys by way of simply dusting a little uranium across the countryside
Yes they emit gamma radiation, but it's low energy and barely penetrates the casing, let alone a layer of moisture-containing dirt
These materials are primarily alpha emitters and as the results in major ports have shown, there are way too many false positives (especially from banana shipments) to be viable - especially if the IDF installed a bunch of decoys by way of simply dusting a little uranium across the countryside
But there are a variety of detectors, ie chemical vapour detectors. But given the volume of cargo shipped around the Med, stuff slips through. Also something I once was on the receiving end of. Stopped going through security at Frankfurt airport with a bunch of freshly printed Cisco documents. So taken off to a side room where they were swabbed, machine didn't go 'bing!' and I was allowed to board. Security wouldn't tell me what triggered the search, but assuming it was something offgassing from the ink rather than my socks.
The door has been opened so anything[sic] may avail itself to the use of such a great idea. The response of the logic of regulators will be to prohibit the possession of devices not verified as being both approved and safe. Now Icom makes and sells under its name radios in the marine, aircraft and ham(radio amateur) beside the business communication so as when the next group of zealots makes its claim to fame in the name of protection we have another wall built against learning that other guys views. Having once seen Wadja's 'Kanal' and viewed both BBC and Al Jazzeera accounts of the Middle East action I am beginning to wonder about ideology capture. But, no matter, the exploding personal electronics sets a new standard for terrorists.
Sure, a toothpaste bomb could knock more than one's teeth out in a heartbeat, but poor dental hygiene is also directly correlated with mortality ... pick your poison!
If an intelligence agency wants to inhume me, there are easier ways than making my toothbrush explode.
Also, having recently found what I thought was toothache was actually gum recession due to brushing too hard I would say : buy an electric toothbrush! One with a sensor that tells you if you're brushing at the correct pressure. You can't repair gums, you can only stop them getting worse.
On the note of mysterious toothache, it can sometimes be sinus pressure on the roots of the molars.
Went to a suitable(1) decongestant and the "Oh goodness why do I feel like I have the start of a cavity!" feeling went away.
Icon because my dentist found that one with an x-ray, and, well, yeah.
1:Good old fashioned pseudoephedrine, even if I felt like I had to sign my life away to buy it.
The phenylephrine decongestant never did work for me, and people thought I was full of it when I informed them years ago that it was bubkis snake oil.
Last laugh was mine when it was found to be just that...
Blow up the pagers, so they resort to using the walkie talkies, then blow those up.
I agree that this looks like the act of a country planning a major invasion. Decapitate the leadership, destroy the ability of the leaders who remain by making them fear the use of any electronic communications device, then you roll in and they can't coordinate a response.
Pity someone didn't slip Netanyahu one of those pagers. Not only has he continued to escalate against the wishes of many in his government, but it is looking more and more likely that he knew what Hamas was planning a year ago and let it happen because it gave him the excuse he wanted to level Palestine.
BBC was reporting that Israel* had to "pull the trigger" early as they were worried that Hezbollah was onto them. Certainly, timing it just before (or during) an actual assault into Lebanon would have seriously hampered any defensive effort, they will presumably have a short time to regroup while Israel is now moving troops to the North. Whether Israel is reorganising for assault or defence time will tell, but the rhetoric suggests attack. That's an escalation in a volatile region and it's getting messier.
Same on DW.news, reportedly the plan was compromised by two people, and exposure was imminent.
If this had been pre-attack, you'd see it done hours before, not with enough time for the opponent to formulate a response, now they will go through their entire logistics chain with a fine coomb.
Whether Israel is reorganising for assault or defence time will tell, but the rhetoric suggests attack. That's an escalation in a volatile region and it's getting messier.
The playbook is to disable communications before launching an attack, so expect that shortly.
Hezbollah have been at pains to avoid civilian casualties. If they wanted to, they could have. They didn't. THIS IS WIDELY REPORTED AND KNOWN. So you sir, are posting absolute lies.
And before anyone brings up the Druze killed in the Golan, there is ZERO evidence pointing to Hezbollah. Those Druze still consider themselves Syrian, NOT Israeli. And THEY directly accused Israel, not Hezbollah.
Sometimes I wish they actually did send a few 100 rockets right on settlers heads. You can't have it both was. If they are going to be constantly accused of this - despite EVERY news report saying otherwise - then they might as well do it.
The point is, they were able to evacuate, BECAUSE Hezbollah were NOT trying to directly kill them. They have been at pains to avoid striking civilian targets. Yes, they wanted to create a buffer zone, and they have. If they had wanted to take out a few 1000 settlers, they could have. THEY CHOSE NOT TO.
Contrast that with how the Zionists behave (who even drop large amounts of white phosphorus on villages in S Lebanon, all on camera), both in Lebanon & the West Bank, in addition to the ongoing Gaza Holocaust.
And contrast the above with the pack of lies you are trying to peddle. The good thing is, outside middle class Western circles, nearly the entirety of the globe understands the truth, and stands with the Resistance.
Blow up the pagers, so they resort to using the walkie talkies, then blow those up.
Walk back. It wasn't that simple.
First, someone leaked info that some mobile phones were compromised. This info went to the top of Hizbullah and Nasrella instructed members to ditch their mobile phones for pagers.
And the rest is history.
Hezbollah thought pagers would be safer than mobiles
Six months ago, Hezbollah's secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah called on the group's members and their families in southern Lebanon to forgo their mobile phones.
"Shut it off, bury it, put it in an iron chest and lock it up," he said in a televised speech.
From the linked article: Experts say the assumption was they would be more difficult to track and infiltrate with Israeli spyware.
I thought the assumption was that their enemy could track the location of a mobile phone (being a transmitting device) but not a pager (being receive-only).
Anyway it appears Israel skipped right past spy-ware this time and instead went directly to kill-ware.
Anyway it appears Israel skipped right past spy-ware this time and instead went directly to kill-ware.
Or maim-ware, because there don't seem to be many fatalities, just a lot of hand, face and probably leg injuries. Which may constitute yet another war crime by Israel. Sure, the attack was ingeneous, but also indiscriminate.
Blowing up pagers issued by a terrorist organisation is as discriminate and targeted as it's realistically possible to get.
It's also likely ended another proxy war from Iran/Russia intended to get a lot of innocent people in Lebanon killed before it starts with practically zero casualties caused to non participants compared to any other course of action. While i'm sure that Russia/Iran and the terrorist group are furious, i'm not seeing any war crimes.
Quite the contrary; Israel appears to have taken more care in keeping the body count down than Iran/Russia who appear to have wanted a high body count of innocents for PR purposes and southern Lebanon looking like Gaza as a result of their proxy groups fighting in towns etc.
Blowing up pagers is indiscriminate because you have no idea who will be nearby when you blow it up. You don't even know that your target will be holding it at the time. Which is why several children are reported casualties.
We can only hope this is added to the pile of war crimes that Netanyahu and his vile cronies are already accused of.
"Blowing up pagers is indiscriminate because you have no idea who will be nearby when you blow it up"
Welcome to war. Queensbury rules don't apply to either side, unfortunately moron lawyers don't understand that.
Whatever you do, with bullets, bombs, missiles, torpedoes, IEDs, there's ALWAYS collateral damage. The Allies would have lost WW2 if they'd applied modern ideas of war crimes.
There are actually well-established rules under international law, including those laid down by the Geneva Convention. If there were no rules, and no laws pertaining to the conduct of combatants in war, no-one would ever stand trial or be found guilty of war crimes. Israel already stands accused of a number of war crimes in relation to its recent conduct in Gaza, and the IHRC are also considering the charge of genocide.
The reason for these laws are to establish bounds to ensure the safe treatment of prisoners of war, and to limit atrocities against civilians. It's also worth pointing out that Israel isn't actually at war with Lebanon. The British government was rightly outraged when Putin had two of his political opponents assassinated in this country. Imagine the upset if he'd detonated hundreds of remote control radio devices to kill people he didn't like who were based in the UK. Israel's conduct is not only barbaric, but is also not for any serious long-term strategic purpose. It's to prolong and widen a war that is the only thing between Netanyahu being put in jail by his own people.
"The British government was rightly outraged when Putin had two of his political opponents assassinated in this country" - Russian dissidents haven't usurped the UK government, are not being armed by Iran, and have not been launching near daily missile attacks on Russia from the UK. I'm not sure why you think the objection to acts of Russian aggression on UK soil is in any way comparable to Israel taking action against the people attacking Israeli citizens. Maybe you just think that anything Israel does is automatically evil?
Being accused of war crimes by your enemies doesn't mean you are actually committing those crimes. The ICC is currently establishing if there is any basis to investigate potential acts of genocide. The only ruling so far in the case started by South African is that the ICC has agreed that South Africa has the ability to raise a case that the ICC should consider. The next ruling will be to either start investigations, or more likely, to dismiss the case due to lack of evidence supporting the South African claims.
First, someone leaked info that some mobile phones were compromised.
s/leaked/planted
This info went to the top of Hizbullah and Nasrella instructed members to ditch their mobile phones for pagers.
Or he was paid to get his followers to use explosive devices.
Re: Netanyahu:
It's a well-established fact at this point that Netanyahu's actually strategy was goad Hamas into attacking, creating a crisis that Netanyahu - who is under investigation for various corruption crimes - can ride to keep himself in office and out of the hands of prosecutors.
He has been recorded at a Likud meeting several years ago stating that the party should be financially supporting Hamas in order to build them up and embolden them so they'd create that "opportunity" to retaliate by destroying everything and create a slaughter.
At least one of his cabinet members has openly suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Palestine.
These people are not sane humans.
Strange choice and very obsolete radio. Maybe Icom stopped making them 10 to 15 years ago. Analogue with Digital voice option UT-155/UT118, and as it's an Amateur Licence model it makes no sense unless the DV modules had encryption and set modified to be outside Ham 2m band (144-146 MHz, or up to 148 MHz in USA). No encryption allowed on Amateur (Ham) radio, unless someone changed that recently.
Icom has warned there are counterfeits.
Plenty of cheaper Chinese two-way radios, but they are mostly analogue.
Other than crowd / event management why would they use a 7W analogue VHF FM (thus unencrypted) radio?
I don't suppose they worried about it being illegal. A Lebanese Minister has said these are unlicensed. There are multiple ways to have a pager fitted with explosives only trigger on a specific message, or even be remotely armed and trigger set, but it's harder to see how this would work unless they only looked like an IC-V82.
https://www.rigpix.com/icom/icv82.htm
"whatever is needed to respond to a modulated signal."
Nothing new about that. Back in the 70s or 80s the IRA was using a circuit with a tone detection IC in quite a small package to trigger land mines. I don't know if it was ever deployed. They'd scratched the ID off the top of the can it was packaged in but once the top of the can had been sliced off it turned out that the part number was etched on the die and it was easily recognised as a part advertised in Wireless World.
There are multiple ways to have a pager fitted with explosives only trigger on a specific message, or even be remotely armed and trigger set, but it's harder to see how this would work unless they only looked like an IC-V82.
It should be entirely possible to hide pager electronics, detonator and explosive inside the radio. If not pager then something which can activate on a particular sequence of tones.
More details here: https://youtu.be/jFoHOs40NGM (Al Jazeera)
It seems it was around 3 grams of PETN which the report describes as (one of) the most powerful explosives.
Also that the pager reported 3 errors before detonating. Time to fish it out and look at it to see what's up.
Another source (sorry, no reference) claimed the explosive was packaged in/around the battery and surrounded by little bits of what would become shrapnel.
All the better to seriously damage anyone looking at it.
Logically the ideal place to put explosives would be inside the battery casing, since with a non-standard battery it just looks like any other oddly-shaped lithium battery. Obviously you'd need to reduce the capacity of the battery a bit, or increase the volume somewhat but with an old device package like those pagers that shouldn't be noticeable.
Detonation trigger is a different matter. We're seeing two different devices both being detonated remotely, so it is reasonable to assume that the detonation method is the same in both. I would think that the trigger is something in the radio or pager that causes sudden, huge current draw and causes the battery to get very hot, with the heat being the trigger for the detonator.
I would think that the trigger is something in the radio or pager that causes sudden, huge current draw and causes the battery to get very hot, with the heat being the trigger for the detonator.
I think that would be needlessly complicated, and potentially unreliable. Assuming Israel had complete control over manufacturing the device, it would be easier to just have it trigger based on a radio signal. The devices would have to appear normal to casual inspection but that wouldn't detect modifications to the radio circuits, processor and there's probably a signal path to the batteries for charge monitoring. I've no idea if the devices used custom battery packs, or just regular AAA or AA batteries but it would need a pretty thorough inspection to reveal a suspicious looking component that could contain a couple of grams of PETN + detonator. I might see if I can find the density of PETN, but that might mean another mark on a watch list somewhere but would give an idea of the volume required to conceal the splodey bits.
I've also seen suggestions that they were detonated by the device's vibrate function, but that seems unlikely and based on wiki saying PETN can be sensitive to shock & vibration. Hitting it with the teeny hammer* used in a lot of mobile devices probably wouldn't do that, plus risk of discovery when users set their devices to silent/vibrate. Seems like it would be much simpler and more reliable to just detonate on a specific radio command.
*These can be fun to strip out of old phones and then repurpose the lil motors into lil cars, robots or anything else where you want a very small motor. Main challenge is removing the lump of metal from the motors shaft without destroying the motor.
These radios support 5 tone signalling. There are actually gpios available internally to sound a vehicle horn etc. Of these were got at and never reprogramed, the programming overridden in the flash, it would quite literally be possible to trigger them all from a button press on a master set.
For instance all of ours have a tone set to sound when one of the manager sets presses a side button. Its the "pay attention to your gorram radio" button. In the Motorola CPS and similarly on ICOM software, I can assign this code to a GPIO internally or even on the side connector. The radios are designed to have remote control features. If using DMR or scrambled analog the tones are normally sent in the clear. Firmware for radios is not hard to find either.
Its actually a trivial attack to engineer. Ill bet the pagers would be a similar setup.
Another source (sorry, no reference) claimed the explosive was packaged in/around the battery and surrounded by little bits of what would become shrapnel.
It seems like the plastic, metal, and PCBs which are already part of the pager should be more than enough potential shrapnel without adding more things which would show up as abnormal.
Probability dictates that there is likely at least one or two of these pagers which were powered off or didn't have batteries installed when the detonate signal went out. It would be very informative to see some internal photos of those devices, but I would expect anything like that will not become public knowledge soon...
Since few cheap radios will have their own encryption anyway since it's not allowed on amateur bands, I would probably try to bolt it on. In that case, it wouldn't really matter whether they were digital or not as long as I could patch into the audio connection. However, that sounds like more work than they were doing. Maybe they just didn't think it through or valued being able to receive signals from any radio over keeping their signals encrypted. For the same reason, if I was using pagers, they would only send encrypted messages, but that's probably not what they were doing either.
So that you could send arbitrary messages, rather than ones you had already planned out. Coded messages are fine if you only have a set list of messages to send, but if you want to deliver a message with specific details that you don't have listed beforehand, delivering them with code but without encryption is often trickier than putting some encryption on your text. A preset code will certainly have a code for "abort everything and go to prearranged backup procedure", but probably doesn't have a prearranged code for "adjust what you are going to do, continue doing most of it, but skip step 12", nor for "abort everything but do not use prearranged backup procedure because someone has a copy of that".
There's nothing indicating that they didn't do that, but if they did, they'd have had to get people to copy an encrypted pager message to something else to decrypt it which is inconvenient. Of course, there are codes that can carry arbitrary messages without encryption, but they're weaker than actual encryption and prone to misinterpretation.
"For the same reason, if I was using pagers, they would only send encrypted messages"
Encoded, using a phrasebook or OTP. Pagers are one-to-many, off-the-shelf units mostly still use POCSAG nearly 50 years after it was created and customising them means that they get very expensive, very quickly AND can't use the existing national pager networks
The last thing that H'bollah need is a paging transmitter broadcasting a big bright "here I am" for HARM devices to home in on
The digital option might hold a clue. Its got to be a combination of tones and time to prevent premature detonation. Triggering them over a wide area might be troublesome, it assumes that there's either repeaters that could be used or an aircraft broadcasting the command.
I daresay we'll find out soon enough. Unfortunately this may set off a whole new phase of terrorism because up to now there's a treaty prohibition on mining everyday objects for everyday civilian use (which, according to the Guardian, Israel is a signatory to). Now that's been broken literally anything could be turned into a bomb and the fun starts because you don't need to spread the products over a wide area to cause panic. Obviously Israel -- the prime suspect in this ("they've got form") thinks "it can't happen here", not a smart long term strategy.
Remember that the pager's explosive content was only 2-3 grams.
"up to now there's a treaty prohibition on mining everyday objects for everyday civilian use (which, according to the Guardian, Israel is a signatory to)"
....which Hamas have been doing for over eleven months, using civilian infrastructure for military purposes, hiding in civilian hospitals, using civilians as defense sheilds, billoting in civilian accommodation....
There are photos of IDF soldiers using Palestinian children as human shields and countless accounts of them murdering civilians. Not sure what kind of moral superiority point you are trying to make, and also not sure why you feel Hamas' activities are relevant to Israel's culpability for civilian deaths in Lebanon.
Palestinian Territory - Video footage released by Al Jazeera TV shows the Israeli army using detained Palestinian civilians as human shields and compelling them to enter dangerous combat zones—evidence of a systematic tactic of the army. There are numerous documented instances of civilians being used as human shields by Israeli forces, which is considered a war crime.
The leaked horrific scenes that were obtained and published by Al Jazeera reveal how the Israeli army uses civilians, including injured detainees, as human shields and forces them into hazardous combat zones after installing cameras on their bodies and binding them with rope. Each of the aforementioned acts of criminal, brutal, and inhumane behaviour constitutes a grave violation of the rules of international humanitarian law, and is a full-fledged war crime. These crimes, and dozens of similar cases, require urgent intervention from the international justice system to ensure the protection of civilians, prevent their use as human shields, and hold the Israeli political and military perpetrators.
Following the commencement of the Israeli army’s ground operations at the end of October 2023, numerous documented cases have shown that the Israeli army has exploited Palestinian civilians by using them as human shields. These civilians have been forced to engage in military operations that directly endanger their lives, such as breaking into buildings or tunnels or searching for possible explosives and tunnels. Others have been detained in homes and conflict zones, endangering their lives and violating international humanitarian law.
The Israeli army has repeatedly used people as human shields, with numerous instances of this behaviour documented throughout the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip. This is an expansion of a long-standing strategy employed by the Israeli army during times of escalation or during its frequent incursions into the West Bank.
The Euro-Med Monitor field team documented a compound and comprehensive crime against a civilian family on 27 June 2024. A family comprising an elderly woman and her four children, including three young women and a one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, was attacked with gunfire and bombs by Israeli forces who stormed their house in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Al-Shujaiya. They were later taken outside and detained for over three hours near Israeli tanks in a dangerous combat zone, despite the injuries they sustained in the initial attack on their home, and were used as human shields. The 65-year-old mother, identified as Safiya Hassan Musa Al-Jamal, was run over by an Israeli tank and killed in front of her son.
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israeli-armys-use-palestinian-civilians-human-shields-has-been-documented-large-scale
And what's really depressing is how many human rights violations we are seeing from the IDF in Palestine when all foreign media are being banned* (& local Palestinian press are being deliberately targeted) so it's actually very difficult for much reportage to leave Palestine (though a lot also revealed by everyday people (not press) via social media, despite IDF best efforts to cut off Palestinians from the internet)
* and major free speech loving democracies** such as USA, UK etc. have been quite happy to not have a press presence / independent reporting in Palestine, not the merest complaint from them, not sure about USA but UK media mainly just parrots Israel press releases, and even those which are normally not totally slavish of the government line have been dire e.g. Channel 4 News (normally the least likely to roll over for Govt messaging of the UK TV news shows ) began the intro to the pager killings / maiming with the punning line "Israel calling" ***
** there may be a hint of sarcasm here
*** London Calling a famous song by UK band the Clash
"this may set off a whole new phase of terrorism"
That ship already sailed. Or maybe was paddled since it was so long ago the sail may not have been invented yet!
It's only in relatively recent times there has been any form of "honour in war" because treaties were signed and even sometimes mostly adhered to. But terrorists never signed any treaties. At the very least, the IRA were planting bombs under peoples cars, using cars as mobile bombs, placing bombs in street rubbish bins, sending parcel bombs etc. ETA in Spain used similar tactics through the 80's and 90's.
These are neither mines nor booby traps because they are remotely triggered, rather than responding to the presence of a nearby indivual/vehicle or handling.
They're also indiscriminate in that they detonate on command and have no regard for who might be holding them, or in the effective range. But this is Israel, so anyone they kill is automatically a Hezbollah or Hamas terrorist.
" No encryption allowed on Amateur (Ham) radio, unless someone changed that recently."
I have a strong feeling that the entities in the middle east would not worry too much about what's "allowed". Placing explosives in devices isn't "allowed" either, but there you are.
Strange choice and very obsolete radio.
Good choice, really. Someone says "Hey, Boss, I can get a really good deal on a couple of pallets of walkie talkies. Old stock, works fine. Are we in?" and since they are our out of production and, according to ICOM, regularly faked, nobody is going to inquire to deeply into a whole bunch turning up.
>Strange choice and very obsolete radio.
Depends, I wonder if in their day they were good radio's and thus there was a reconditioning and secondhand market. Reconditioning devices, would make it much simpler to tamper with, however, the potentially hard part would be amassing the number of devices being claimed here and stockpiling them. I wonder if some Israeli government department were having a clearout and someone had a bright idea...
>Other than crowd / event management why would they use a 7W analogue VHF FM (thus unencrypted) radio?
Well no cell towers and a potential range of 200 miles it would give coverage across much of Israel and into its neighbours.
As for encryption, much depends on what the intended use was.
What is particularly interesting here, is if the detonating chip was looking for a signal with a particular characteristic, encryption isn't going to help.
Well no cell towers and a potential range of 200 miles it would give coverage across much of Israel and into its neighbours.
Israel also has an assortment of electronic warfare aircraft, so could have transmitted the detonation signal from one of those flying just inside Israel's borders. That would give a much larger range and coverage than terrestrial antennas.. Which are one of the things Hezbollah's been targetting along the Israeli border anyway. Same with transmitter towers in the Golan Heights.
Clearly, this was a difficult decision for Israel. (No sarcasm)
Having effectively supplied the communications infrastructure (pagers and walk-in talkies) being used by Hezbollah and its friends, they would have been in a position to eavesdrop on potentially all communications using these devices, from the moment they were supplied; which given how quiet people are, would have been before October 2023…
So in detonating the bombs in these devices Israel has blinded itself to a very useful stream of intelligence…
So in detonating the bombs in these devices Israel has blinded itself to a very useful stream of intelligence…
Apparently they had to or risk getting rumbled. Latest from Reuters is the possible involvement of a Bulgarian company, Norta Global. Seems like Bulgaria has diversified away from umbrella making.
Not at all strange. Solid, reliable radios, parts easy to get, as pointed out encryption it possible, not sure why you are confused about the bands in play as these are primarily commercial units and there are matching repeater systems. Obfuscation of transmitted information will help on top of scrambling but these radios aren't intended to resist determined evesdropping. Amyone working in commercial radio comms lives by the maxim that you should consider anything you transmit as public knowledge unless using dedicated trunking systems, and even then... These aren't stupid people, they know this.
GP340s would last longer mind
It HAS made people nervous of refurbished Icom kit today and there are a LOT of those radios in the private sector where the supply route isn't clear and used radios are big business. With 180 Motorola radios I couldn't tell you exactly how each one went from Motorola to my business.
2 Mtr being line of sight makes the triangulation process that much harder. Also directional antennas are not too unhandy so if you bury yourself with a lot of band activity and use the directional antenna a nice comms mesh could be established( the ol' purloined letter trick). As to the model my Yaesu FT2 is nice but if I were going to make "mods" my FT530 is easier to see the components. Ideally I use the old Heath kit handheld with discrete components.
James Bond."
BTW, I read somewhere that Sean Connery1 fluffed several times and it took forever to get a good take on the iconic line.
____________________
1 Connery is canonical and all the rest are pretenders. Though Roger Moore did a pretty good job in the role, I will admit.
Amateur radio operator and EE. Have built, operated, and disassembled lots of radio gear. Familiar with Icom products.
From the photos of blown-up Icom radios, they could be either amateur-band or commercial radios - the photos aren't clear enough to read the model numbers. Probably not important which, either.
The important part: They look as though the batteries exploded. The radios themselves were largely intact. This makes excellent sense, as there's very little empty space in the chassis itself to Put Stuff into. The battery, however, is large and heavy, provides a convenient power source, and one could easily remove half the battery and replace it with Stuff. Piggybacking on the radio's receiver would be more of a challenge, but is well within the capabilities of a professional engineering team. And the users would be unlikely to notice that their battery life was half of what it should be.
So the batteries were probably the place where Stuff Happened.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
As to the ethics of mounting attacks that unavoidably kill or injure significant numbers of bystanders, I have nothing but bad things to say about that.
"So the batteries were probably the place where Stuff Happened."
Thanks for the explanation. I must admit, with my limited radio knowledge, when I heard the walkie talkies were also going off now, my first thought was maybe a battery supplier had been compromised, or at least the shipments intercepted and the batteries were replaced with explosive filled ones. But then I wondered how they could synchronise the detonations. Is this kit using "intelligent" batteries that communicate with the device in a way that firmware in the device and/or battery can be used to trigger it. Or am I over thinking it?
We have had 'tone controlled' receivers (within 2 way radios) for decades.
In 1981 I was working with such devices (used by an ambulance service in the UK). There were 6 tones (I think - see date!) and a specific 5 tone sequence would unmute the receiver. This was used so only the intended recipient ambulance would get the message (and corresponding workload). Each receiver was programmed to unmute only for a specific sequence which was different for every receiver. This also caused the transmitter to send a response for confirmation of receipt (but that is probably irrelevant here).
A tiny module in the output audio path was used for this. The tones were notched out (notch filters) and therefore never heard in the actual audio output.
Given the large number of available sequences, it would be quite easy to ensure that one particular sequence would trigger an 'event'. As noted above, this is well known (tried and tested) technology.
This is simply one of the ways such things are possible.
This is simply one of the ways such things are possible.
Another is good'ol UK Economy 7 where the switching to the night rate is controlled by a simple tone burst transmitted at 198 kHz, which is the Bbc's Radio 4 longwave service and has been used since the late '70s. And now causing some FUN! because the Bbc wants to shut down those transmitters, and people who rely on the teleswitches to control their heaters are going to lose that ability unless they get a 'smart' meter.
An article today discusses the mechanics and potential impacts of a small explosion caused by a pager containing explosives. It highlights that even a minimal amount of explosive material, such as 0.2 grams, can cause significant injuries, such as the loss of a finger. The explosive’s effect on the human body depends on the proximity and nature of the explosion, with the pressure wave causing tissue and bone damage if the device is worn close to the body. Shrapnel from the device's components can also cause injuries.
The article suggests that the explosive used was likely a plastic explosive like Semtex, a combination of RDX and PETN, which is moldable and stable enough for transportation. The explosive could be detonated remotely using an electrical impulse, possibly generated by the pager’s battery, triggering a primary explosive and initiating the main charge. The article estimates that the amount of Semtex used would be small, approximately 17 to 35 cubic centimeters in volume with a density of 1.7 grams per cubic centimetre.
Thx Chatty
The article estimates that the amount of Semtex used would be small, approximately 17 to 35 cubic centimeters in volume with a density of 1.7 grams per cubic centimetre.
That's quite a large volume for a small device like a pager or radio though. Plus the volume would be bulked out by the addition of a plasticiser as used to convert PETN into C4 or Semtex.
"in two more days, we'll have another type of personal appliance that you shouldn't buy second have from Northern Israel."
Hmmm, I doubt the same trick can be used again with much success. I'd be building my own battery packs and not buying them online at a very low price. I suspect that there was a flood of really low priced replacement batteries on the market for some time prior. If they didn't last as long as the OEM cells, people wouldn't be surprised due to the cheap price. If they had an Icom handie talkie with a removable pack, they'd get two at the low price and keep one on a charger and not be too concerned.
"The devices were then blown up once in the hands of members of the Iran-backed terror collective Hezbollah"
Israel doesn't seem to have cared much about whose hands they were in as they executed their extra-judicial removal of eyes and limbs. Many have concerns about drone strike assassinations without trial and due process and this is of even greater scale. There is also the thorny problem of whether those killed or maimed were playing an active part in hostilities and where this sits with respect to international law and the Geneva conventions.
It is unlikely to worry Netanyahu and his far right goons who consider Hezbollah and Hamas and anyone associated with them to be sub-human vermin who need eradicating by any means necessary but it doesn't sit comfortably with others.
Just to repeat the obvious. Iran is a sovereign country. I know we've been effectively at war with the place for 40 years -- economic war, at least, with occasional breakouts of hostilities -- but regardless of what we think its still a legitimate country with a legitimate foreign policy. The fact we don't agree with them or their policies is irrelevant. There are forums for that sort of thing.
The moment we justify any form of terrorism because the targets are what we call "Iran backed militants" is the moment we lose all legitimacy and become a terrorist state ourselves. This isn't a White Hat / Black Hat cowboy movie, this is real life with real people. This mindset is edging a population that might have included a lot of neutral or even friendly people towards open hostility (you might have noticed that Turkey seems to have shifted significantly in the last year or two and its not going be a matter of a quick "regime change" to bring it back to being a loyal NATO subject).
But Israel is. And, as I wrote in a earlier post which disappeared when a mod deleted the post it was in reply to -
The big problem I have with this attack is it allows others to say Jews and Israelis are no better than they are.
And let's prey they don't go full-on "an eye for an eye" during any revenge incursion.
Perish the thought of "eye for an eye" - since Israel seems to have updated their previous unwritten policy of killing at least 10 Palestinians for every Israeli death blamed on Palestinians. The ratio now is approximately 24:1 and they don't seem to care if the ones slaughtered are actual militants or fighters, since the vast majority of assassinated Palestinians since October 7 2023 are women and children..
The ratio now is approximately 24:1 and they don't seem to care if the ones slaughtered are actual militants or fighters, since the vast majority of assassinated Palestinians since October 7 2023 are women and children..
Israel doesn't care about it's own population, so why expect it to care about Palestinians? If an Israeli does get killed or injured, that just provides another excuse for Bibi the Baby Bomber to bomb some more apartment buildings. Plus once it's finished flattening Gaza, it'll mean more apartments can be built by Israeli property developers and then sold or rented out to Jewish people.
"Plus once it's finished flattening Gaza, it'll mean more apartments can be built by Israeli property developers and then sold or rented out to Jewish people."
So it's good for Israel to have come under a massive rocket attack since it gave them good cover to go in and level the place?
I'm not seeing that the rocket attack that kicked this current surge into being was sound tactical thinking.
24:1? Hamas (or other Palestinian orgs.) often demand hundreds:1 in prisoner* exchanges - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_prisoner_exchanges
From the link above: '2010s - On October 18, 2011, captured IDF tank gunner Gilad Shalit, captured by the Palestinian militant organization Hamas in 2006, was released in exchange for 1027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.'
Israel have a way to go if they are using Hamas' estimation of what an Isreali soldier or citizen is worth in exchange for their own people. I estimate that to be ~1,335,000 - current Palestinian count is ~42,000 killed.
* Dead or alive.
Hamas never had a chance to sign, they (narrowly) won the legislative election of Palestine in 2006, so who knows, they may have signed if history allowed them the chance.
Obviously this could not be allowed* so banned Hamas from elections (Abbas (of Fatah) had won the 2005 presidential election & used presidential decree to ban Hamas (& some other parties))
* Too many politicians liking the idea of minimal opposition so when a chance came to exclude political opponents via essentially dictatorial legislation it was always going to be used.
especially one with any interests in the Middel East, I think I'd be giving my personal electronic gear a thorough scrub down right about now.
Or just an immediate ban on electronic devices on airlines, or importation of any devices containing Israeli components.
Israel may want to play coy about exactly how it engineered this, but there are only a few options. Devices were compromised at source, ie in Taiwan for the pagers and wherever the iCom radios were made. Or shipments destined for Lebanon were intercepted in transit, modified to add the splodey feature and then sent on their way without anyone along the supply chain noticing. And that only pagers & radios destined for Lebanon, and ideally Hezbollah have the dial-a-bang feature and aren't floating around the world in fairly urgent need of disarmament. I think it's pretty certain devices that failed to detonate, or incompletely detonate are being studied to find out how it was done.
From what the Beeb reports, the pagers were manufactured in Hungary (a Hungarian company paid the Taiwanese company for their trademark a while ago, according to the Taiwanese), so that's a damn sight closer to Israel. And the Hungarian company is not responding to press enquiries... would it be beyond the realm of the believable if Mossad set up a Hungarian company, paid for a trademark, bought stock of pager hardware, modified it as appropriate, and then rebadged it before flogging it to someone who flogged it to Hezbollah?
It would not surprise me in the slightest. Now add walkie-talkies to that too... hey presto.
And the Hungarian company is not responding to press enquiries... would it be beyond the realm of the believable if Mossad set up a Hungarian company, paid for a trademark, bought stock of pager hardware, modified it as appropriate, and then rebadged it before flogging it to someone who flogged it to Hezbollah?
Sure. But that would require a couple of someones to set up the shell company, buy the trademark and then wait for an order. Mossad might have been able to steer that, if they had control over the buying process to specify only these devices from these suppliers to make sure they only ended up with the target users. Hungary might not be very happy if they had an unlicensed bomb making factory either.
It is quite probable that most of the Hungarian company did not know this was an objective. They probably made a lot of innocent pagers, etc, to have a working model and tooling to match. Only for this special customer would some part(s) be swapped.
You can't simply "modify" 5,000 assembled units between order and shipment by hand, that would be so much effort and so risky. I guess they had some part mass produced secretly, probably the battery, that had less L-Ion and the rest filled with explosives. Who would notice? Pagers are not 1-2 day power gobblers like a mobile phone, if you get 4 weeks between charges instead of the advertised 6 would you care or bother checking why?
The mystery to me is how such a battery would be triggered by a specific message, but maybe someone will get a hold of a failed-to-explode example and tell the world.
Battery overload is more incendiary than explosive, 3 grams of PETN has been mentioned, that'd tally with the pager blast effects seen.
Quite a few nation states have the capability to produce tiny dedicated chips capable of waiting for a specific signal before setting of a charge.
That's regular in a pager.
The one I carried around for years ( when on call ) used 2 AA batteries. (4 Batteries a year, so the draw is not important)
I don't think the technology changed that much to replace the AA batteries by Li-Ion stuff;.. And if you look at it from the bulding company point of view, it's cheaper to design wth AA ( or AAA ) batteries and put the cost of powering the item on the end customer than to design with Li-Ion and put the cost of powering the item on yourself.
We need to remember that it's 30 years old tech, not an Iphone 16.
The Taiwanese company page for the pagers posted yesterday advertised them with a USB-C port for charging which would suggest they have some sort of rechargeable battery - whether that's them being sold with a set of rechargeable AA/AAA Li-Ion batteries or a mobile phone battery (or mouse battery or similar small Li-Ion battery) embedded in the device I don't know.
[BBC] BAC's website listed one person as its chief executive and founder - Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono - and does not appear to mention other employees. BBC Verify has learned she graduated from the University of Catania with a physics degree in 2001. According to her LinkedIn profile, she also holds PhDs from two London universities. We have made several attempts to contact her, but have been unable to reach her. NBC has reported it had spoken to Ms Bársony-Arcidiacono, who confirmed her company worked with Gold Apollo. However, when asked about the pagers and the explosions, she said: "I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong." The BBC has called BAC a number of times, but there is no answer. A spokesperson for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said the exploding pagers were "never" in Hungary. “Authorities have confirmed that the company in question is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary,” government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
From Guardian : BAC Consulting’s website went down on Wednesday, but internet archives of the site were full of generic pictures of coastlines and vague descriptions of its work without any reference to pager manufacture. Previous posts by Bársony-Arcidiacono on LinkedIn feature pro-Russian, anti-Ukraine comments and a complaint “how does it make no one says anything about US colonization”?
From BBC : BBC Verify has accessed BAC’s company records, which reveal it was first incorporated in 2022 and has a single shareholder.
Also : A company brochure, external, published on LinkedIn, lists eight organisations BAC claims to have worked with - including the European Commission and the UK Department for International Development (DfID)....The UK Foreign Office - which has taken on DfID's responsibilities - told us it was in the process of investigating. But based on initial conversations, it said it did not have any involvement with BAC, despite the firm's claim.
Front company? If so this was part of a (at least) 2 year plan.
US & German spooks ran a company (Crypto AG) out of Switzerland for many years making compromised encryption machines (and healthy profit). UK refurbished Enigma machines for years after WW2 and sold them on with the same 'uncrackable' line as used by the Germans pre war. Other instances undoubtedly exist, what can you do, build your own 'everything'?
Spy agencies are devious, many clever people spend their waking hours trying to think up new ways to reach a goal.
<q> or importation of any devices containing Israeli components</q>
Dude do you even hear yourself :D
How much do you think each of these devices ended up costing the Israelis once you draw the line on a per-unit cost ? Pennies ? A few bucks ? Or was it an operation with money no-object, involving probably creating a company in Hungary and setting up production facilities ?
You think they placed an order by the container to save, and have any remaining, that can end up blowing up your back pocket ?
Any industrialized country is equipped to build such items, and most of the organized groups can build them as well. This is why you spend time cursing at the TSA line at the airport, shoes in hand.
And any half-baked organization can DETECT such devices, should they THINK of doing so.
That's the sting of it - whoever was providing these DID NOT.
Nothing has changed as far as your precious safety goes. If any organized entity wants to blow your trousers, they'll have the device that will do it built in your own town. No matter whose imports you restrict.
Hezbollah are not idiots and have the technological capability of a mid-sized nation-state's intelligence services working for them; I expect that by yesterday afternoon some of their techies (or some techies in the Iranian embassy in Beirut; difficult to draw a solid line there) had disassembled a Hezbollah issue walkie-talkie and found the modifications, and so Israel blew them up today because Hezbollah would have told everyone to get rid of them tomorrow.
This strikes me as an actively evil version of the Encrochat project ... make your adversaries think they need special equipment rather than iMessage, WhatsApp and Signal, and then provide the special equipment.
(though given where Pegasus comes from I would understand Hezbollah being decidedly wary about using standard secure messengers on standard Android and Apple devices because their adversary is known to have zero-day attacks on both OSes)
"Or just an immediate ban on electronic devices on airlines, or importation of any devices containing Israeli components."
I doubt the products had a "Made in Israel" label on them. They could have been shipped from Taiwan from a seemingly Taiwanese vendor. Anything shipped to an address in Lebanon got the loaded product and specific marketing was set up to hit that market. Lots of Asian online sellers are here today and gone tomorrow. That's one of the reasons any lifetime product guarantees are useless. For some things I buy on eBay, I look at the vendor's "about" page and will often decline to buy from one in China yet claiming a US shipping point. They often set up an account named "BobsDeals" so look like US seller and occasionally have somebody go over their ad copy. If they don't, their grammar and word usage will rat them out. In this case, choosing a common Lebanese name for a vendor and having ad copy that's appropriate for the region will put customers at ease and simplify the process. I could buy from a vendor in Germany while using a translation app, but that would be more work since I'm not fluent in German.
I doubt the products had a "Made in Israel" label on them. They could have been shipped from Taiwan from a seemingly Taiwanese vendor. Anything shipped to an address in Lebanon got the loaded product and specific marketing was set up to hit that market.
This is the supply-chain (or kill-chain) problem. So the pagers were originally made.. somewhere. The Hungarian company just seems to be a sales & marketing business with no manufacturing capability. iCom says-
Icom describes the IC-V82 as a handheld radio which was exported to the Middle East from 2004 to 2014 and has not been shipped since then. The manufacturing of the batteries has also stopped, it says.
So the radios were also manufactured.. somewhere. Which was probably Israel, because they have the capability to create thousands of remote controlled bombs. But then you have to get those devices into the supply chain. Hezbollah wouldn't order from an Israeli company for obvious reasons. So somehow, Israel had to get the bombs into the hands of the end user. Mossad may have had someone inside Hezbollah to ensure the orders went to a company Mossad controlled so the order could be filled with the bombs. So Mossad would have to have some way into that company, or their fullfillment system to substitue that product.
When the bombs entered Lebanon, there would have been waybills showing where they were shipped from, and that wouldn't be Israel. So Israel would have had to intercept the orders, export the bombs to a 'trusted' nation so they could then be sent to Lebanon. I think Taiwan is a bit of a red herring because that assumes people in a Taiwanese factory wouldn't have noticed the battery packs were a bit.. odd. Plus if the bombs were assembled by an innocent party, that means they may have ordered more of the bomb components (ie fake batteries) that may have entered the supply chain. That would be reckless, even for Israel.
Infiltrating the supply chain seems far more likely, but still problematic. So a Mossad agent orders X pagers and Y radios from an entity Israel controls. Israel manufactures those fake products, inserts them into the supply system and they end up in Lebanon. Without any Customs systems detecting the odor of PETN, which border controls can do although not every container might be inspected. Risk is that only Lebanon ended up with the bombs, and they're not floating around the rest of the world. So for example I've seen plenty of iCom radios on both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers.
Maybe they forgot to load the PETN "substance detection card" into their divination-based bomb detectors
Maybe they forgot to load the PETN "substance detection card" into their divination-based bomb detectors
Heh.. or the bees.. THE BEES!. But apparently not that easy to detect by vapor. It's one of those nasties that is relatively easy to make and has been sadly popular amongst terrorists. But it'll be one of those big questions for security services to locate the bomb factory. Taiwan really won't be happy if it was in Taiwan. There's probably potential for additional FUN! like suing Israel for trademark infringement.
"I think Taiwan is a bit of a red herring because that assumes people in a Taiwanese factory wouldn't have noticed the battery packs were a bit.. odd. Plus if the bombs were assembled by an innocent party, that means they may have ordered more of the bomb components (ie fake batteries) that may have entered the supply chain. "
I suggest that a factory in Taiwan wouldn't be operated by a Taiwanese company, but a front. I could set up a "company" in many countries with an address of a small commercial property I rented temporarily, a web site and maybe even some entries on sites that rate B2B companies. I don't have to register the company in the country since I'd only be there a very short time and could deflect any inquiries long enough to clear out if need be. All I'd need is an address that maps out to some sort of real address so somebody punching it into Google Maps will get a valid return, could be a residence, that I can put on a shipping manifest. I might not even care if there was an issue collecting the money paid for the product if the goal was to infiltrate products into a country and into the hands of particular people. I come across countless companies whose web stores have no information on their address or contact information beyond an email. I won't buy from them, but it's very common. They might just be a front end for an Amazon drop shipping operation run from somebody's house. The thing is that many people don't do the same amount of checking and if the buyer is going to make a bulk purchase to resell, the original source can be thoroughly obfuscated. I've bought things on eBay in bulk that were loss leaders or just some company looking to clear out inventory and relisted if for more when it came in. I still keep an eye out for that, but it's getting rarer. What I will also sometimes do is buy in bulk at a discount so buyer's can pay a premium to get it quicker through me in the US than via a kayak from China.
I suggest that a factory in Taiwan wouldn't be operated by a Taiwanese company, but a front. I could set up a "company" in many countries with an address of a small commercial property I rented temporarily, a web site and maybe even some entries on sites that rate B2B companies.
This seems to be what happened. So BAC Consulting was set up a couple of years ago in Hungary and licensed the pagers from Gold Apollo. So BAC becomes a 'legitimate' seller of pagers and maybe radios. BAC seems to have done some legit business, ie company records show revenues from other orders. Israel then spreads FUD about mobile phones being easy to track and locate, which is true ie both Russia and Ukraine have been doing this.
Israel probably had assets inside Hezbollah who raised a PO to buy the pagers & radios from BAC, who then filled the order with the exploding versions. Question then is how the orders got filled, because neither BAC nor Gold Apollo manufactured them. That was probably Israel, and they've long relied on sayanim as helpers. So Mossad bankrolls an electronics manufacturing company that can churn out counterfeit iComs, make the pagers and maybe other electronics to appear legit. Question then is where that factory is, because many Middle Eastern countries boycott anything 'Made in Israel'.
But once BAC gets the order from Lebanon, raises a PO with BombCo, Israel could then ship the bombs to BombCo, who then ships to Lebanon from an entity in a 'friendly' country. Otherwise the shipment might get rejected if the shipment went via say, Haifa. Which seems to be the mystery part, ie where is BombCo, because they're either operating a bomb factory, or imported/exported explosives. Especially as the precursors to make PETN are on control lists given all the terrorist attacks that have used PETN previously. But then BombCo may have been licensed for those given the precursors can have legitimate uses.
With weapons transfer the Bills of Lading that start the journey do not finish the journey. One or two cut outs and your SAM or SSM arrives at its destination as Sno-cone supplies. The same network that moves Heroin can just as easily moved the electronics. The battery suggestions have merit; think the last time that you really examined a battery. After all the Houthis are getting not so small missile through a blockade.
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The pagers in question are widely used by Lebanon's hospitals and EMTs
Israel may have been targetting Hamas but their usual indiscriminate zealousness has resulted in it being a large DDoS against Lebanon's critical infrastructure and more than likely put a bunch of people off the fence and into the "not liking that mob down south" camp
One of the things that sticks out in Jewish history is that Nebuchanesser(sp) booted the Hebrews out and sent them to Babylon because they were a huge PITA to their neighbours and the Romans did much the same a few centuries later. In all cases they arrived "in the promised land" only to find people already living there, deciding "We'll have it anyway"
I watched the assassination of Rabin live on BBC world in 1995 following his signing of a "two state solution" with Yassar Arafat. It was fairly clear where Israeli right wingers were headed even then and the only surprising thing is that they've taken so long to move to open extermination tactics
Expelled from their homeland by colonisers who are then kicked out by a different set of colonisers, but somehow you think it's wrong for the Jews to come back to their ancestral homeland. "open extermination tactics" - what absolute bollocks of a statement - you do a very good impression of a raving antisemite.
"The pagers in question are widely used by Lebanon's hospitals and EMTs" - no, not widely used, and only by Hezbollah members (not Hamas, who are a different Iranian proxy further "down south"). No one in Lebanon will have been on the fence - they are either Islamofascists determined to kill all the Jews before moving on to the Christians and the other non-Muslims, or they already hate Hezbollah and will have been glad "the mob down south" have dealt Hezbollah a blow.
All the comments talking about how these detonations are indications of an imminent invasion I think are missing this point.
Sowing the seeds of doubt about their communication infrastructure (or all of their electronics in general) is a valuable win for an adversary, too.
The trouble is, with all this “it is the will of xyz god” stuff being used to justify violence, either the gods are warped and really need to be locked up = they like nothing better than watch their creations fight each other, or their devotees have totally misunderstand what their chosen god told them…
It's being done already (archive link).
Wait until this starts getting imported into areas that aren't in conflict, by non-state actors who just want to hit civilians. It'll be one hell of a bloodbath.
This conversation/set of comments has given me more insight into the situation than all the news sites I've read so far. The Reg forums are populated by a greater number of intelligent people than most other forums I've seen. Not just conjecture, but conjecture that's been thought through.
I realise that some of the comments are daft, but you can tell they're daft by the number of downvotes.
Something to do with IT backgrounds I suppose.
"This conversation/set of comments has given me more insight into the situation than all the news sites I've read so far."
There's generally a lack of conspiracy theories stretched to fit a political narrative and much more back and forth with regards to how something could be done, in this case.
Apparently the same pagers are widely used by Lebanon's EMTs and hospitals and given past Israeli actions I'd put odds on them regarding killing/maiming the medical sector "collatoral damage", if not a bonus (ie: these explosives were stuffed into EVERY Lebanon-bound pager, not just the ones for Hesbollah)
The American hospital in Beirut apparently issued a "dump your pager" warning to staff less than 24 hours before the explosion, so SOMEONE was tipped off
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