Kill switch: How Israel managed to explode devices in attack on Hezbollah

An unprecedented strike on Hezbollah that saw hundreds of paging devices used by the Lebanon-based armed group exploding and killing at least 12 people has set the cat among the pigeons over the alleged involvement of Israel in the apparent cyber attack.

At least two of those killed are children, while the number of injured is estimated to be around 2,800, Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday.

Barely a few hours later, hundreds of walkie-talkies began exploding across Lebanon, killing at least 20 people and injuring 450 more people according to Lebanese authorities.

Though there is no official word from Israel on the two incidents, in line with its policy of total silence on such controversial events, Hezbollah has squarely blamed Tel Aviv for the attack on its cadres.

An Israeli news website claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the kill.

Western media analysts have used words like “incredible”, “extraordinary”, and “never been anything like this” to describe what happened in Lebanon but refrained from discussing Israel’s involvement or the inherent message in the attack, not only to Tel Aviv’s archenemy Hezbollah but also to other opponents.

Experts, however, point to the fact that many top tech companies are run by former employees of Israel’s notorious 8200 cyber unit and feel that the pager attack might be a chilling message that Tel Aviv is breathing down the neck of those with anti-Zionist views.

Israel has a long history of targeting its opponents through remote operations, ranging from intricate cyberattacks to remote-controlled machine guns targeting leaders in drive-by shootings.

Interception theory

Dr Alper Ozbilen, an academic of electronic engineering and the chairman of InterProbe Information Technology, an Ankara-based company specialising in cyber security, has different theories to explain how Israel might have simultaneously launched the attack, which “contains many firsts in its context”.

“Among different possibilities, I believe the most probable theory is that an intelligence unit, which is most likely part of the Israeli state, had received an espionage input on a shipment of pagers routed to Lebanon for Hezbollah members,” Ozbilen tells TRT World.

“Israelis apparently wanted to turn this espionage input into an opportunity to manipulate these devices.”

Onur Aktas, the former head of the Turkish National Cyber Security Center and founder of the cyber security company S4E, concurs.

“This seems to be a supply chain attack,” Aktas tells TRT World, referring to possible Israeli interception of the shipment to Hezbollah.

According to media reports, the compromised pagers were made by Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company. Taiwan has not been largely recognised as a state across the globe.

The company’s founder and chairperson, Hsu Ching-kuang, however, denied that the AR-924 model pagers were made in Taiwan, claiming that they were designed and made by a Budapest-based distributor called BAC Consulting KFT.

If the pagers came from Hungary, they were shipped through numerous ports in different countries along the Mediterranean coast and kept in different depots until reaching their final destination in Lebanon.

Both Ozbilen and Aktas say that Israeli operatives might have intervened in this transportation process to place explosive devices inside the pagers.

According to Ozbilen, Israelis most likely placed a very small amount of RDX and C4 explosives inside these devices.

“Then, possibly, the tasked unit set up a detonating mechanism inside these devices that could explode when triggered by a central system,” he adds.

In some sense, the mode of attack on the pagers is similar to the 1996 explosion of a booby-trapped mobile phone used by Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’s then-chief bombmaker and the leader of the Qassam Brigades’s West Bank branch, according to Ozbilen. Ayyash was killed in Gaza.

Since losing some leading members due to mobile phone tracking and explosions, both Hamas and Hezbollah stopped using smartphones and turned to older technologies like pagers, which do not allow pinpointing their exact location, says Ozbilen.

“But they were still hunted by Israel,” he adds.

Ozbilen does not also rule out the possibility of placing not only a software-activated bomb device with a battery inside the pagers, but also a virtual private server (VPS) and pinpoint location finder.

Aktas also says that “no one really knows what was inside these devices”.

“There could even be cameras inside”, and Israeli operatives might have used these to track Hezbollah fighters.

Such remote attacks usually involve what is known as the ‘kill switch’ – a pre-installed mechanism that allows switching off or remote detonation of multiple devices.

Exploding battery theory

Another possible explanation for the beeper attack is a battery explosion theory, according to both Ozbilen and Aktas.

“Israelis might have heated up the batteries of the pagers using a software to trigger the explosions,” Aktas tells TRT World.

“But the batteries of the pagers are too small, which can not really lead to the size of explosions we have seen in different video records,” he adds.

According to a Hezbollah official, some Lebanese users said that their pagers heated up and as a result, they disposed of the devices prior to their explosions.

Both Aktas and Ozbilen are unsure about the feasibility of such a scenario.

“...When I checked the videos of the explosions…I came to the conclusion that the size of these batteries can not produce such big bursts,” says Aktas.

They, however, agree that the attacks are unprecedented in scale, intended to “corner people in a psychological deadlock”, according to Ozliben.

“This is an attack that intimidates not only the people it [Israel] fights on the ground but also its critics and activists who oppose Israel's actions in the international arena.”

Aktas also sees a similar message.

“If Israel can do this to the pagers, people around the world might start wondering what Israel can do to their trains, planes, phones and cars,” he adds.