Comment by doubleorseven 3 days ago
> If we try to do what we are best at here at HN, let’s focus the discussion on the technical aspects of it.
Technical? Yes it's interesting but you are missing the biggest part here: how do you convince such a huge organization to switch so many devices? This human engineering is the really interesting part here.
Israel has an intelligence agency that's generally recognized to be quite competent. I'm sure it would have taken them approximately 5 minutes to learn from their many spies that a new form of communications is being used.
Theoretically, pagers are simpler devices, meaning it would be much easier in principle to analyse both hardware and software to check for issues, unlike a mainstream phone OS which has a bigger software attack area and can have at least some zero day attacks known to a state level actor like Israel.
Although, if it really was explosive inside the pagers it seems Hezbollah didn't do this.
You can also find out what your target is using, find some exploits in it and publicize them, then offer a super good deal on an upgraded model.
If you’ve figured out how to get explosives into pagers, the next question is how do you get your enemy to buy a bunch of new pagers from you.
They have to want new pagers in a hurry.
So you just need to convince them that their phones are all already compromised.
Note that this does not require that their phones actually be compromised.
Exactly. But this buyer is not a regular buyer, he is not getting a tracking number and refreshing some random website to see where it's shipment is. The buyer must have been with the goods from a point before it reached its destinated country. There are so many plays that had to play here in order to orcestrate this. Should make a really good heist movie, just with a different prize at the end.
Hezbollah has said some time ago they were switching to pagers because Israel can get inside their cell phones.