Supply chain interference suspected as cause of pager detonations

In an apparently calculated attack, pagers began exploding in Beirut at around 1530 local time and lasted for about an hour.

A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence and counter terrorism agency, planted a small amount of explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers ordered by Hezbollah months before yesterday’s detonations.

According to the BBC, Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, Gold Apollo, has denied it was involved in the attack. In the same report, company founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said Gold Apollo had signed an agreement with a European based company to manufacture the devices and use his company’s name.

The Council on Foreign Relations says Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon that has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United States and several other countries. The organisation opposes Israel and Western powers operating in the Middle East, and it functions as a proxy of Iran.

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With no official statement from Israel on its involvement, speculation has been rife as to what caused the simultaneous detonation of so many pagers. 

Commenting, Dr. Harjinder Singh Lallie, director of Warwick University’s Cyber Security Centre, said: “As usual not a lot known about this attack, but there are potentially serious ramifications.

“News reports of the synchronised explosion of pagers owned by Hezbollah members exploding demonstrates how supply chain espionage and cyber-attacks can be used to cause dangerous physical damage and even threat to life. What we have experienced here is a very sophisticated espionage attack in which pagers appear to have been intersected, modified and distributed without anybody noticing any problems in the supply chain.

“This sets a very dangerous precedent, for example equipment owned by ministers and other important personal could be modified to, for example, send out recordings, listen to live conversations and communications, and even turn cameras on…without anybody noticing.”