Exploding Pagers in Lebanon Spur Theories on Sabotage Method

Since the pagers began going off in Lebanon on Tuesday, theories have swirled about how the devices, considered obsolete in much of the world, were turned into dangerous weapons that have killed several people and injured nearly 3,000.

As Lebanon accused Israel of masterminding the attack targeting Hezbollah militants, much of the debate focused on the possibility that the supply chain for the retro devices had been compromised. A prevailing idea was that the pagers were designed so that their batteries would heat up until the devices exploded.

Overheating batteries indicated “foul play,” Lebanon’s telecommunications minister, Johnny Corm, told Bloomberg.

But a cyber security expert, Robert Graham, dismissed this theory. He told X that “making batteries do anything other than burn is very difficult and implausible. Much more plausible is that someone bribed the factory to get the explosives in.”

Among the other theories was that an electronic signal triggered the explosions.

“If true, I suspect it was an intentional physical defect activated by cybernetics” or a radio frequency signal, said Mark Montgomery, retired admiral and executive director of the Solarium Cyberspace Commission.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV showed what it said were images of Motorola pagers that were used before the attack. “These pagers were detonated with high-tech by the Israeli enemy,” Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim Mousawi told the group’s television network.

Gold Apollo Co., a small Taiwanese company identified in some media reports as the maker of the pagers that exploded, has denied making the devices.

“Those devices are not ours,” said a company official, who asked not to be named ahead of an official statement. The person added that Gold Apollo licenses its brand to at least one other company, without elaborating.

Motorola Solutions Inc. did not immediately respond to Bloomberg’s requests for comment.

“Supply Chain Implementation”

Deepa Kundur, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, said she suspects it was a “supply chain rollout.” In such an attack, she said, the perpetrator would infiltrate the pager’s upstream supply chain to manufacture a critical component with an embedded explosive charge without the end seller’s knowledge. The explosive component could sit in a pager for months or years before detonating upon receiving a message that triggers the modified part.

Pagers have been replaced by cell phones in much of the world, though NPR recently reported that doctors in US hospitals continue to favor their no-nonsense texting. Pagers are also commonly used in medical facilities in Lebanon.

Hezbollah operatives use low-tech devices such as pagers and walkie-talkies to avoid interception of their communications by Israeli intelligence. They can send encrypted messages without revealing their location.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind the attacks. But Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute said: “It’s by any definition a pretty significant coup for Israel, meaning they’ve penetrated Hezbollah’s security channels.”

“Israel is improving things in some ways, but it’s actually trying to send a message to Hezbollah through something less than a full-scale war,” he said.

US officials said they had no prior knowledge of the exploding pagers.

Israeli intelligence

The Israeli secret services are considered masterful in engineering such covert sabotage without ever acknowledging their role.

Most famously, the Stuxnet attack, which was discovered in 2010, involved the planting of computer code that destroyed up to 1,000 nuclear centrifuges in Iran, causing them to spin out of control. It was widely considered a joint effort by Israel and the US.

In 1996, Hamas bomb maker Yahya Ayyash was killed in Gaza City when his cell phone exploded during a weekly phone call to his father in the West Bank. Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, was believed to be behind the murder. In 2001, Israel was blamed for planting a booby trap in a public telephone in the center of the Palestinian city of Nablus, which exploded when Osama Jawabri, a member of a Palestinian militant group, went to use it.

In July, Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of the militant group Hamas, was killed in an explosion while staying at a guesthouse in Tehran. As usual, Israel neither confirmed nor denied it was behind the attack, which was believed to have occurred when a bomb planted in the guest house was detonated remotely.

Photo: Ambulances are surrounded by people at the entrance to the American University of Beirut Medical Center on September 17, 2024. Photo credit: Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images

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