cachvico 10 months ago

With a statement like that one wonders if Hezbollah leadership itself has been infiltrated.

  • kspacewalk2 10 months ago

    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.

    • andyetandyet 10 months ago

      [flagged]

      • gojomo 10 months ago

        Not really: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-h...

        They just didn't realize how real this particular plan was. It's quite likely Hamas is regularly bluffing similar attacks in many potentially-compromised channels. If they then see Israel react, they've received info about Israel's capabilities & tactics – and maybe even ways to misdirect Israeli forces with future feints. And any real plans may stay hidden amongst dozens/hundreds of other "false alarms".

  • tptacek 10 months ago

    The IRGC itself has clearly and spectacularly infiltrated; read the details of the Haniyeh attack. So, yeah, at this point I don't think anyone in the IRGC network can trust anybody else. The messaging here is pretty intense.

  • grotorea 10 months ago

    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.

  • axlee 10 months ago

    I mean Israel is behind Pegasus, so it's not exactly a secret that they can get into any cellphone. Israel didn't need to infiltrate Hezbollah, they just needed publicity.

    • londons_explore 10 months ago

      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.

jameshart 10 months ago

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.

  • doubleorseven 10 months ago

    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.

  • detourdog 10 months ago

    You find where the pagers are coming from. They probably had a supply chain going to cycle through pagers. 2,700 pagers being replaced regularly is an easy target.