Hezbollah should have shopped at Walmart for their pagers
Hezbollah should have shopped at Walmart for their pagers
Be careful where you buy your mobile devices, my friends!
I’m late in writing about this story, but I’ve found it so fascinating that I had to do so anyway. I’m sure you’ve heard by now about the pagers and other electronic devices of Hezbollah being detonated remotely by what most agree is Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
How the attacks were done and the extent of the damage to Hezbollah
Here is some info on how it was done:
On the Pager Terrorism attacks on Lebanon.
Hours after the detonation of the pagers, Hezbollah’s technical investigation committees concluded that explosive charges were planted inside the devices, and that the type of explosives used and the method of integrating them with technical elements in the device and its battery were determined.
The committees also studied the technical mechanism that allowed the enemy to penetrate the center for sending telegrams to the relevant devices and send a message to activate the explosive charge at the same time. According to information, other security agencies in Lebanon are working to verify how the small bombs were planted in the pagers.
The investigations include identifying all the human and logistical elements and local or foreign officials who are involved in supplying this shipment of pagers and new wireless devices that were on their way to Hezbollah.
The investigation focuses on specific issues, including the mechanism of action adopted by Israeli intelligence, whether in terms of falsifying data that allowed it to be a seller or a mediator in the operation, or investigating the possibility that the enemy discovered the mechanism for purchasing the quantity and worked to intercept the shipment on its way to Lebanon, and replace it with other devices that were booby-trapped earlier, or that the booby-trapping took place at the headquarters of the supplying company.
While the specialized units in Hezbollah and the Lebanese army detonated a number of devices that did not explode, Hezbollah worked during the past 24 hours to withdraw all the devices from their locations in warehouses and offices or from individuals and neutralized them.
The New York Times quoted American military and security sources yesterday that the operation began years ago, and that in light of Hezbollah’s resort to using fake devices, the relevant parties in Israel “found that they had an opportunity, and Israeli intelligence officials established a fake company to manufacture international pager devices.
The contract was concluded between a company called BAC Consulting, based in Hungary, and the manufacturing company Gold Apollo.” According to the report, “measures were taken to conceal the real person behind the shell company by establishing at least two other companies. Israel invested millions of dollars in this operation.
The central company reached out to regular customers to supply them with pagers, but the most important customer for it was, of course, Hezbollah.” The newspaper quoted “three intelligence officers” as saying that “the devices supplied to Hezbollah were manufactured separately, and contained batteries that included explosive charges.
These devices were sent to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 on a small scale. During last summer, thousands of them reached Lebanon.”
Investigation in Bulgaria
Following the allegations of a manufacturing company in Hungary, the authorities in Bulgaria announced that they would open an investigation into a Sofia-based company on suspicion of being behind the sale of the devices.
Media reports indicated that Norta Global Ltd. is responsible for selling the devices in cooperation with the Hungary-based BAC Consulting company, which acts as an intermediary.
The Hungarian news agency Telex reported the day before yesterday that BAC was involved in the deal “as a simple intermediary, did not actually carry out any activities, and does not have an office.” Norta Global, owned by Norwegian Renson Jose, was founded in April 2022 and has an address in a house in the Bulgarian capital. It is registered with the “corporate headquarters service” provider, which hosts 196 other companies.
This tweet purports to have the statistics of how many deaths and injuries Hezbollah suffered from the electronic device attacks:
And here is the full version of the supposed leaked document:
Bear in mind that I have no way of verifying any of this, but it seems to be circulating all over X. Given the number of people and devices involved, the number of dead and wounded seems quite reasonable to me.
My personal reaction to this story
When I first heard about all of this, I thought it had to be a fake story. It just seemed too farfetched to have happened. Imagine my surprise when I realized it was real. Wow! You’ve got to give it to the Israelis to pull something like this off, it seems like something out of a James Bond novel.
Yet, it also scared the crap out of me. I love my phone, I use it for so many different things. But when I heard about the Hezbollah situation, I stopped what I was doing for a moment and glanced at my phone, which was laying on the coffee table. I stared at it for a second and wondered to myself: “What the hell is inside that thing, and can somebody use it to kill me?” 😅
Seriously, we’ve crossed the Rubicon with this attack on Hezbollah. The precedent has been set to use personal electronics to kill people, so of course there will be other groups and nations doing this besides just the Israelis. There are many nations and groups that are bitter enemies, and you can bet that, even as I type this article, some of them are exploring ways to do something similar to the people they hate.
I do not think we all need to panic about our phones, tablets, and laptops. What Israel apparently did was quite complicated, and it’s not like it can be easily done to Google or Apple’s phones and other products. It took years for Israel to achieve it, and I do not think anyone will be able to replicate it easily.
Still, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t freak me out. Maybe it has to do with how dependent we all are on technology now. Back in the 80s, nobody had smartphones and tablets like they do now, and few people even owned personal computers. But now that technology has become a part of everyday life in a way that we could not have imagined all those years ago, it is truly ubiquitous in our lives.
The Hezbollah attack is great news for China (and Russia)
Somebody posted the following images online, and I agree completely. Hezbollah and other groups and nations are going to go directly to the Chinese (and possibly the Russians) to buy devices that will be guaranteed not to have been tampered with, the way the pagers were in the recent attack.
Given how the United States and other Western countries are tied to Israel politically and financially, it’s clear that any group or nation that values their lives will be buying heavily from China. The Chinese, of course, will be happy to sell as many devices as possible while making sure they have not been booby-trapped.
When will Hezbollah return the favor to Israel?
One worrisome complication in all of this is Hezbollah’s inevitable attempt to pay Israel back for the pager attack. You can bet that they are already thinking and possibly planning a way to get revenge. That does not bode well for attempts to avoid a large war in the Middle East. 🤔
Device security is now at the top of customer concerns
Customers who want to purchase electronic devices are now going to want top-notch security when it comes to the manufacturing of such products. Nobody is going to want to buy from a company with a dubious pedigree in terms of the product’s supply chain. This will indeed serve large manufacturing countries like China very well.
We’ve entered into new territory, my friends. Keep a close eye on your phone, watch, pager, laptop or tablet. Who knows what could be lurking inside? 😉
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This is a general problem with the replacement of retail with buying by Internet. With retail, you can pick a random store and a random item. With online ordering, your name comes before the selection of the item.
Here, I'm going to write something, from Croatia, that might dispel your fears. I work as an IT technician, to put it simply. I currently work for a company from Switzerland and the computers I work on are completely separated from this kind of normal communication. The day before the pager attack, my cell phone was literally sliding across the table towards the computers. It was such an EM shock, it was unbelievable. This is what happened the day before.
Now I will write about something that is the problem of all the armies of the world. Corruption. Here in Croatia, we were at war 30 years ago, and criminals from the army traded with each other, without any remorse and to the detriment of all of us. That's exactly what I think happened with these pagers and other military equipment. Someone took the money because he accepted that very offer. And that's it. It was a shipment specifically aimed at that organization.
Do I have to write about the Mossad? NY skyscrapers (no one believed that was possible either, and those guys who danced in the background); Panama and Pandora Papers released when appropriate; the one as an omission from last year on 07.10. to initiate the total destruction of Gaza, etc. They are infiltrated everywhere (CERN, start of www)...but, I have to write here - Mossad is not so much a problem for me, but the incredible support they have from our political leaders (all in the west respectively , even in the east). They are the problem for me - those criminals and thieves, not so much the Mossad (which is also just a weapon of the hidden hand). It is clear that this action was prepared by a psychopath a long time ago. How they are like hidden clues...
Finally, about IT equipment and lithium. Lithium is very expensive to mine, because it is found in compounds in nature. Lithium is flammable in contact with air. So every lithium battery is a potential weapon. Here specifically, I don't even think that explosives should have been placed - but some wires were disconnected a little and when a directional signal was released (this was proven, at that time the signal was repeated several times) - those batteries overheated and boom!
Now and perhaps the most important thing I want to say is - these psychopathic patients who thought of doing this heinous act of terrorism - they are counting on the fear of the majority who use pagers, walkie-talkies, mobile phones... Yes, they never think on only one level - always on several. Think of the NY skyscrapers and the fear and then the anti-terror laws. That struggle brought millions of refugees to our countries.
Of course, the mass media around the world will report on the explosions of cell phones and other equipment. They must silence us in every possible way. If it's worth anything, my company I work for is certainly stronger than all the social networks, but it never advertises itself and there is no need to make any kind of unfavorable deals with any governments or organizations. We simply work. And as far as I can see, the owners of the company are very angry about what happened and the story that is emerging. That's why, if you can believe it - there are some of us in the IT industry who are not on the side of evil, and I see how we are all lumped into the same basket. A faulty lithium battery, or one that suffers physical damage - has always been a huge problem. I don't know why they continue to produce them, because there are other and better technologies. And this wouldn't work with pagers if there weren't corrupt people you can always buy. That's it. This is exclusively my attitude and observation, I always admit if I am wrong.
As always, be well everyone. Many greetings from Croatia. God bless you.