Scenes of people bleeding and being rushed into hospitals flashed on television screens and social media platforms on Tuesday (September 17, 2024) evening in Lebanon. The attack, targeted at armed group Hezbollah, killed at least nine and injured several thousands, including Iran’s envoy to Beirut. The Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary condemned the attack as an “Israeli aggression”.
CCTV footage of blasts in multiple parts of the Middle Eastern country surprised the Iran-backed Hezbollah as two of its fighters and an 8-year-old girl were killed. The militant group vowed to retaliate against Israel for the blasts. The simultaneous explosions occurred largely in the southern part of Lebanon—a Hezbollah stronghold. Israel’s military has declined to comment.
But the biggest surprise of this attack lies in the weapon used by the perpetrator. The devices behind the serial blasts were low-tech gadgets: pagers.
A day after the pager blasts, reports emerged that walkie-talkies used by the militant group Hezbollah blew up, killing nearly two dozen and injuring over 450 people. The covert two-day operation in Lebanon highlights high levels of tech sophistication in simple, vintage-time gadgets.
Lebanon explosion LIVE updates - September 18, 2024
But the biggest surprise of this attack lies in the weapon used by the perpetrator. The devices behind the serial blasts were unsophisticated, low-tech gadgets: pagers.
What are pagers and how do they work?
Pagers, often called beepers, are communication devices that emerged in the mid-20th century. Their presence was eclipsed by the cellular phones that grew in popularity in the 1990s and 2000s. And subsequently, the dawn of the smartphone pushed the pagers into the shadows. But the humble, palm-sized device had its own strengths that played out well in specific circumstances.
Pagers operate using radio signals, which are transmitted by towers and received by the device. They function as either one-way or two-way systems. One-way pagers receive messages from a central transmitter but cannot send replies. That means a user can receive numeric or alphanumeric messages, and the device alerts them through a beep or vibration.
In a two-way system, the pagers are capable of handling communication in both directions. Users can receive and respond to messages, which makes them slightly more advanced, but these are still limited in functionality compared to modern smartphones.
Pagers rely on a network of radio towers that broadcast signals over a wide area. In many cases, they are more reliable than mobile phones in certain conditions because their communication system operates over simple, robust radio waves, often penetrating areas where cell coverage might be weak.
Despite their technological obsolescence in mainstream use, pagers are still valued in healthcare, emergency services, and remote locations where cellular networks are unreliable. Their simplicity ensures they are more energy-efficient and less prone to network outages.
How are pagers useful in covert operations?
Pagers are relatively unsophisticated compared to smartphones or other modern gadgets, which make them less susceptible to high-tech surveillance techniques. They don’t have GPS or internet connectivity, reducing the risk of location tracking and hacking. Intelligence agencies rely heavily on digital footprints, but pagers are harder to monitor remotely.
Secondly, pagers use radio frequencies, which makes it harder for interception compared to cellular or internet-based communication devices. This feature makes them ideal for sending short, encrypted, or coded messages in sensitive situations. And with one-way pagers, the risk of being detected is lower since the device does not transmit a response, making it difficult for intelligence agencies or adversaries to trace the origin or location of the message.
Thirdly, their simplicity plays a key role in how they can be manipulated, which could be a highly likely reason as to why it was used in the Hezbollah attack. Pagers can be modified to include circuits that trigger a signal when a specific message is received. These modifications are used in covert operations to activate explosives or send alerts without raising immediate suspicion.
“The belief among Hezbollah was that their phone systems, cell phones, were compromised by the Israelis,” Bruce Schneier, Adjunct Lecturer of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, told me in The Interface podcast interview. “So, to maintain security, they used older technology like pagers, thinking they weren’t as vulnerable.”
“The Israelis preyed on that belief and manipulated the pagers. They could have just eavesdropped, but they used them for destructive purposes instead,” he added.
Where else were low-tech, remote detonators used prior to the Hezbollah attack?
While it is unclear whether pagers were used to trigger blasts prior to the Hezbollah attack, there are several instances of remote detonators being used in conflict situations. Armed groups use radio-controlled Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to detonate explosives from a distance. Attackers use such systems to bomb high-profile targets, including police stations and government buildings.
These remote systems can even be deployed in a car or at the level of a doorbell to trigger explosions. And such devices are difficult to trace because they emit weak signals that could be mistaken for background noise or ignored by conventional detection methods. Simple everyday consumer electronics and communication gadgets can also be used to detonate IEDs remotely.
In one instance nearly three decades ago, on January 5, 1996, Yehiyeh Ayash, the man known as “The Engineer,” was killed after the cellular phone in his hand exploded. Ayash was one of the founders of the Izzadin Kassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and he was known to have masterminded a wave of suicide attacks that rocked Israel in the 1990s. Ayash was believed to be killed by the Israel Security Agency by switching his handheld with another identical phone that was bugged to explode.
Speaking about low-tech gadgets, Schneier, in The Interface interview, said, “It’s not the vintage tech that matters -- it just happened to be vintage because Hezbollah wanted it. The tampering could have been done with any technology.”
Is the pager attack a new tool in the armed conflict playbook?
Their small size and outdated look make pagers an ideal device to send short, encrypted texts that can’t be picked up by the intelligence agencies. But turning that unsophisticated device into a weapon to attack an adversary is nothing short of a page from a spy novel. While Israel has declined to comment on both the pager and the walkie-talkie blasts, it is overwhelmingly clear who could have pulled off such a massive operation.
A Reuters report revealed that the pagers in the explosion bore Gold Apollo’s branding. While the Taiwan-based company has denied making the pagers used in the blasts in Lebanon, the company’s founder, Hsu Ching-Kuang, clarified that the devices were manufactured by a European firm licensed to use their brand. Gold Apollo insists it was not responsible for the product and expressed embarrassment over the incident. Hezbollah, a militant group, reportedly ordered thousands of pagers, which they believed could help evade Israeli tracking systems.
Experts are hypothesising myriad ways by which this attack could have been planned and executed. But there is nothing conclusive yet. It is unclear whether the devices were bugged at the manufacturing level or at the supply chain level.
Schneier noted that “The Israelis were able to set up a front company, selling pagers to Hezbollah, and those pagers were created in Taiwan and modified by the Israelis to have explosives in them.”
The low-tech gadget attacks are coming at a time when tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah are escalating. The duo has been exchanging fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since start of the Gaza war in October. And this operation could very well start a new phase in the prolonged regional conflict.
(This story is updated with the walkie talkie blasts, expert quotes, and a past instance of cellular phone explosion.)
Published - September 18, 2024 02:19 pm IST
