How many other device supply chains have Israel infiltrated in the same manner?

Be careful of your SodaStream!!!!

Absolutely ingenious.

alavaliant:

 

Not to mention even if you didn't open them up.   I would have thought running an airport style explosives scanner over them would have triggered some sort of result?

 

Why would they run a scanner? They knew they hadn't planted anything.

johno1234: No way are these exploding batteries. It's explosives. Lithium batteries swell, get hot, start smoking then catch fire but they don't just go bang. So the Israelis must have prepared a batch of modified but functional pagers with explosives and triggers, and substituted them into the supply chain.

There is a picture of a car where the occupant was wearing or using one of these pagers. The windscreen had impact damage, on the inside. It is possible the explosive device included some shrapnel material.

Bung:

 

alavaliant:

 

Not to mention even if you didn't open them up.   I would have thought running an airport style explosives scanner over them would have triggered some sort of result?

 

 

Why would they run a scanner? They knew they hadn't planted anything.

 

Your comment perfectly illustrates the saying "The biggest risk to security, is the thought that there is no risk".

eracode: Also raises the question of how the Israelis got their hands on the pagers and Hezbollah were none the wiser. Insider somewhere gave them access.

Surveillance and some form of supply chain penetration does not really need an insider. Goods go through any number of transitions from shipper to receiver.

gzt:

 

johno1234: No way are these exploding batteries. It's explosives. Lithium batteries swell, get hot, start smoking then catch fire but they don't just go bang. So the Israelis must have prepared a batch of modified but functional pagers with explosives and triggers, and substituted them into the supply chain.

 

There is a picture of a car where the occupant was wearing or using one of these pagers. The windscreen had impact damage, on the inside. It is possible the explosive device included some shrapnel material.

 

Crossed my mind too. However the small number of impacts makes me think it was just bits of the pager.

Eracode: This begs the question of how the perp got access to the pager network and was able to send to all pagers at the same time - maybe a disguised software update?

Pagers in most of the world are mostly used for specialized cases and where security is not a paramount consideration. It's old tech. On that basis pager systems are probably full of holes that no-one ever looks for, and probably no reward programs exist either.

gzt:

 

Eracode: This begs the question of how the perp got access to the pager network and was able to send to all pagers at the same time - maybe a disguised software update?

 

Pagers in most of the world are mostly used for specialized cases and where security is not a paramount consideration. It's old tech. On that basis pager systems are probably full of holes that no-one ever looks for, and probably no reward programs exist either.

 

I had heard that apparently Hezbollah run their own private pager network,  therefore anyone on it was seen by Israel as a legit target, 

eracode:

 

Also raises the question of how the Israelis got their hands on the pagers and Hezbollah were none the wiser. Insider somewhere gave them access.

 

you are underestimating the Mossad.

not long ago someone was assassinated in a secure hotel in a different country and till today nobody in that country knows how they did it

eracode: Possibiy the perpetrator somehow got doctored pagers with explosives inside into users hands that were then remotely detonated. The logistics of doing this into enemy hands/territory are difficult to imagine.

It was a supply-chain attack, Hezbollah switched to pagers because they're receive-only and so can't be tracked.  Given that POCSAG has no security, they were presumably just sending out codewords rather than meaningful text.

In terms of the attack, it's likely one that Mossad had had sitting on a shelf for a long time (given the heyday of pagers was in the previous century) and dusted off for this occasion.  The substitution would be no different to the NSA's interception of Cisco routers in transit and backdooring them on the way through.  If you want to know about previous iterations of this sort of thing, read "Rise and Kill First" by Ronen Bergman.

johno1234: No way are these exploding batteries. It's explosives. Lithium batteries swell, get hot, start smoking then catch fire but they don't just go bang. So the Israelis must have prepared a batch of modified but functional pagers with explosives and triggers, and substituted them into the supply chain.

The way to do it would be to replace one of the battery cells with explosive, modify the BMS to never charge that cell, and then have it triggered by a specific message being received.  It takes a lot of planning to set up but once that's done it's just a case of following the flowchart.

The question now is: does this leave Hezbollah in a leaderless state and unable to fight coherently, or does it just leave them angry and motivated?

The latter.  For every leader you kill there are three more waiting in the wings. And the replacements are often a lot worse than the one you got rid of.

eracode: Also raises the question of how the Israelis got their hands on the pagers and Hezbollah were none the wiser. Insider somewhere gave them access.

They've very good at that, I mean they got a remotely-detonated bomb into the guest house of the Sa'dabad complex, the official residence of the Iranian president, to take out Ismail Haniyeh.

(This being another example of what I mentioned earlier, replacing a moderate with a hardliner.  Speculation is that it was done deliberately to reduce the chances of the Gaza conflict being resolved before the next election in Israel).

But for 1 bomb sniffing dog before final distribution ?

If you have rampant corruption it might create its own security holes.
Your purchasing manager, or shipping manager prefers the contractor that is providing largest under the table commission?

Christian side of Lebanon has no love for Hezbollah either.
Neither do Syrians fighting Assad, which means they are fighting Hezbollah, Iran(Indirectly), Assad and Russia. 

So a lot of ways the holes in slices of swiss cheese can line up.