Comment by gee_totes 3 days ago
Maybe a dumb question, but I wonder if this was a software attack or IL was able to modify the physical pagers that are issued during Hezbollah onboarding. If this was a pure software attack, are only pagers susceptible? Or are we unknowingly carrying around bombs in our pocket, waiting for the counterattack?
There are CCTV videos purported to show some of the explosions: https://x.com/warfareanalysis/status/1836041245996584983
It is indeed not the kind of explosion I would expect to see from lithium ion. (Those usually are a lot more flame-y at least the ones I have seen so far.). But I'm not an expert.
There's no way the little battery in a pager has enough energy to do this. This is a 'supply chain attack' by the Israelis. An ingenious one at that.
NB: that's probably backwards. Batteries contain a lot of energy, they just don't release it particularly quickly.
Most explosives have relatively low energy density, however the energy they have is released far faster than with conventional fuels. By unit mass, TNT (or other comparable explosives such as C4, RDX, etc.) have about 1/10th the energy as liquid petroleum fuels (petrol, diesel, kerosene).
Though again most battery technologies also have fairly low energy densities. But those are probably roughly comparable with most mainstream explosives.
TNT has an energy density of 4.184 MJ/kg.
A LiON battery: 0.36–0.875 MJ/kg.
Motorola pagers (a widely used type) seem to typically take a 3.5V 500mAh battery, which if I'm doing my conversions correctly (mAh * V * 3.6) works out to about 23 kilojoule. That would be the energy equivalent of ~5g TNT. A light charge, but one you wouldn't want going off on your hip.
(Note: I've corrected an off-by-an-order-of-1,000 error above, earlier read 23 MJ / 180g TNT. As I said, I'm not entirely certain of my calculations, which are using the Wikipedia energy densities noted and GNU Units.)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density>
Again, batteries won't explode as footage of the presumed Israeli attack on Hezbolla members shows. But they do contain appreciable energy. It would more likely burn rapidly at worst case.
> Motorola pagers (a widely used type) seem to typically take a 3.5V 500mAh battery, which if I'm doing my conversions correctly (mAh * V * 3.6) works out to about 23 MJ.
Batteries should really quote energy, not charge, for this reason. The voltage is not a constant.
But something’s wrong with your math. Even assuming a constant 3.5V, that’s 1.75Wh, and 1Wh is 3600J, so that’s 6300J.
23MJ would drive a car a respectable distance :)
Gasoline has 45 MJ/kg for comparison
so it is a ten times that of TNT. Source: https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ArthurGolnik.shtml
Why waste it on a clever show instead of stalking their owners silently?
They’re likely already stalking their owners via software exploits on their phones
Assuming a lithium battery and control over the firmware+power draw, couldn't you theoretically make the battery output more charge than safe, leading to at least overheating and maybe more?
I also find it unlikely this was just a remote attack rather than supply chain, but with little to no details we can only assume for now.
Yes, but compare a phone's much larger lithium battery exploding: https://youtu.be/8nz5ijXcckI?si=jpZOWIs3BIQTvVt2&t=31
With a Hezbollah pager exploding: https://x.com/DrEliDavid/status/1836037485492629605
Not really. This is about the worst your can do with a lithium battery in practice https://youtu.be/oieH2wwDGzo and that's a proper short in something way bigger than a pager. They don't explode like these were reported to.
If you put yourself in the position of Hezbollah's IT chief, you get a different picture than this question assumes.
Let's assume you're somewhat competent and aware of supply chain vulnerabilities.
Let's also assume that pagers are not that popular anymore, and you insist on a pager that's completely passive. It can't emit any signals at all, or the Mossad would track it.
So you probably find some supplier of gear to the Iranians and other non-Western countries, and give them your specifications. That supplier is reliable, you think. It probably listens to a signal that Hez and only Hez transmits. It's Security By Obscurity, the choice of naive buyers everywhere.
You certainly don't buy anything off the shelf. Well, we know what's wrong with Security By Obscurity: Mossad only has to decipher one secret.
If the description of "exploding" and "tearing [a] bag to shreds" are accurate then it has to be a physical modification of the pagers, lithium ion batteries don't explode with a lot of force when they go up.