by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

September 17, 2024 may go down as one of the most infamous days in history, as an unprecedented cyberattack was carried out against people in Lebanon and Syria earlier today, by simultaneously detonating thousands of pagers that blew up remotely killing several people, and injuring thousands.

Most of the victims targeted were members of Hezbollah, but many innocent people were also attacked.

BEIRUT (AP) — Pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded near simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, killing at least nine people – including an 8-year-old girl — and wounding several thousand, officials said. They blamed Israel in what appeared to be a sophisticated, remote attack.

Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon.

The pagers that exploded had been newly acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members to stop using cell phones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence.

A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand the group had not used before.

At about 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, pagers started heating up and then exploding in the pockets and hands of those carrying them — particularly in a southern Beirut suburb and the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon where Hezbollah has a strong presence, and in Damascus, where several Hezbollah members were wounded, Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official said.

The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. (Source.)

At the time of this writing, there are two main theories about how Israel was able to pull off this historic attack.

Experts have shared two competing theories as to how hundreds of pagers could have exploded simultaneously.

One theory is that there was a cybersecurity breach, causing the pagers’ lithium batteries to overheat and detonate.

Another is that this was a “supply chain attack,” where the pagers were tampered with during the manufacturing and shipping process.

David Kennedy, a former US National Security Agency intelligence analyst, told CNN that the explosions seen in videos shared online appear to be “too large for this to be a remote and direct hack that would overload the pager and cause a lithium battery explosion.”

Kennedy said he found the second theory to be more plausible.

“It’s more likely that Israel had human operatives… in Hezbollah… The pagers would have been implanted with explosives and likely only to detonate when a certain message was received,” he said.

“The complexity needed to pull this off is incredible. It would have required many different intelligence components and execution. Human intelligence (HUMINT) would be the main method used to pull this off, along with intercepting the supply chain in order to make modifications to the pagers,” he added. (Source.)

U.S. Government politicians have distanced themselves from having any prior knowledge of this attack, and at this point I tend to agree with them (although I am sure intelligence agencies like the CIA not only knew about this, but probably helped facilitate it), because unlike previous news about major attacks in the Middle East since Oct. 7, 2023, there was no apparent immediate “standard script” that all the U.S. news services were using to explain this event, as it seemed to catch everyone off guard.

As the corporate media scrambled today to find “experts” on cyber security to help explain what just happened, the general consensus at this point is that this was caused by a supply chain interception with some kind of hardware modification that allowed them to trigger these devices remotely.

Here is a report from Forbes:

Did Israel Hack Hezbollah Pagers To Make Them Explode? Former Intel Agents Have A More Likely Explanation

Ex-IDF and NSA analysts told Forbes the attackers likely intercepted the devices, tampered with their software and turned them into explosives that can be detonated from anywhere.

Hundreds of wireless pagers exploded at the same time across Lebanon on Tuesday, leading to claims Israel could have hacked the devices of Hezbollah operatives.

But ex-intelligence analysts tell Forbes a totally remote hack is not the most likely explanation.

“Looking at the videos it seems like the explosion was way stronger than anything that could be potentially made by a regular [computing] chip,” said one former IDF agent, asking to remain anonymous because of their prior affiliation with Israel intelligence.

A more likely scenario, the agent said, is that devices were intercepted prior to delivery and outfitted with explosives and software that would detonate them when they received a trigger message. Cybersecurity researcher and former NSA analyst Patrick Wardle, now CEO of security firm DoubleYou, said it would not have been particularly difficult to do this.

“Given physical access to electronics, it is trivial to surreptitiously modify the device,” he told Forbes.

He noted that unless someone opened up the pagers, “nothing would be seen as amiss.”

“It’s basically putting a bomb into a device and connecting with a software-based trigger,” Wardle said, citing 2014 research that he’d carried out with another young hacker, showing Nest Dropcams could be made to explode at a facial recognition match with easily obtained explosive material and detonator chip.

“This was in 2014… so if two kids could pull this off, imagine what a real intelligence agency could do.”

(Source.)

Samsung Galaxy Cell phone that blew up. Image source.

While the most likely explanation of how this happened is that these pagers were altered before people started using them, and that it is not possible to remotely hack existing mobile devices and just blow them up, that doesn’t mean that this event today is unlikely to happen again, or that this could not happen in the United States.

First of all, lithium ion batteries are notorious for blowing up and burning. This has been happening accidentally for at least 20 years now.

Here is a report from CBS in October of 2004, twenty years ago:

Exploding Cell Phones Spur Recalls

Curtis Sathre said it was like a bomb going off. His 13-year-old son Michael stood stunned, his ears ringing, hand gushing blood and body covered in black ash.

In a split second last August, fragments from Michael’s exploding cell phone had hit him between the eyes and lodged in the ceiling of the family’s home in Oceanside, Calif.

Over the past two years, federal safety officials have received 83 reports of cell phones exploding or catching fire, usually because of incompatible, faulty or counterfeit batteries or chargers.

Burns to the face, neck, leg and hip are among the dozens of injury reports the agency has received. (Source.)

In 2016 through 2017, Samsung recalled 2.5 million of its Galaxy Note 7s because their lithium batteries were exploding on people. See:

Samsung finally figures out why its phones kept exploding

Here is a compilation of some videos with exploding Samsung cell phones:

And cell phones are not the only devices with lithium batteries that have a history of blowing up, as this short video documents with incredibly graphic footage:

Last year, the World Economic Forum warned that the U.S. lithium battery supply chain is highly unregulated, presenting a clear danger.

Charted: Where does the US lithium battery supply come from?

After a string of fires caused by batteries of electric scooters and bicycles, lithium-ion batteries have come under scrutiny once again.

The batteries, which power many everyday products such as laptops, phones and cameras, are generally considered safe as long as they’re properly manufactured, don’t have any defects and aren’t mistreated or tampered with.

There is a huge, unregulated market for battery packs, however, posing a challenge to regulators and a threat to consumers. The United States imports hundreds of millions of lithium-ion batteries each year, with the volume ever increasing. (Source.)

And now, as of today, these lithium batteries have apparently been successfully weaponized for mass killing, able to be detonated remotely in a cyberattack.

The Cowardly Actions of the Israeli Zionist Murderers

Left: American-Turkish peace activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi now dead. Source. Right: Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil who was threatened with decapitation. Source.

Today’s attacks that harmed innocent people going about their daily business in peace, are normal terrorist actions by the cowardly Zionist Israeli military in recent days.

26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi who was an American and Turkish citizen was shot and killed by the IDF last week even though she was unarmed and presented no threat to the Zionists.

Israel admitted that they killed her, but claimed it was “unintentional,” while others present claimed she was “deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli soldiers” for protesting. (Source.)

At least one Zionist politician in the U.S. actually cheered her death.

“Fire Away”: Florida State Rep. Randy Fine Celebrates Israel Killing an American Citizen

Jewish Florida State Rep Randy Fine (R) reacted to news that Israel killed an American peace activist in the occupied West Bank by celebrating and encouraging the Jewish state to “fire away” and kill even more.

On Friday, Israel killed Aysenur Eygi, 26, “with a bullet to the head” while she was taking part in a protest against Jewish settlement expansion (which ostensibly aligns with official US government policy opposing such settlements).

A Jewish witness from the Israeli paper Haaretz said she did not pose any threat whatsoever when she was shot.

Rep. Fine cheered her murder, writing Friday evening on X: “Throw rocks, get shot. One less #MuslimTerror ist. #FireAway.”

In another incident that shows how some IDF soldiers love to pick on defenseless women, they terrorized a young woman who was unarmed and a journalist by threatening to cut her head off.

To stifle truth, Israelis threatens to decapitate Lebanese journalist

Israelis, armed with US impunity, spares no one in its war on Gaza and aggression on Lebanon, deliberately targeting journalists amid its systematic strategy of silencing the truth.

Israeli attempts to silence the truth are relentless, with one method focusing on deliberately targeting journalists who cover the massacres committed by Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinian and Lebanese people, which are crimes against humanity, to say the least.

The latest of such attempts was aimed at Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, of Al-Akhbar newspaper, who is tasked with covering the Israeli aggression on South Lebanon. Khalil came under a direct threat via WhatsApp, in which a number contacted her and said that “they will decapitate her if she does not leave Lebanon.”

Journalist Amal Khalil revealed that she received a message from the Israeli enemy threatening to kill her and demolish her home and calling on her to leave Lebanon. This prompted Khalil to inform the relevant authorities of this matter, “as the enemy has recently resorted to this method against a lot of people.”

Speaking to Al Mayadeen, journalist Khalil said that the threat she was subjected to is against every journalist who continues to stand strong in the South, documenting Israeli crimes in video and audio.

Khalil recalled the Israeli attacks on journalists in southern Lebanon, which resulted in the martyrdom of Al Mayadeen‘s correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabie Me’mari, as well as Reuters photojournalist Issam Abdallah, stressing that all Israeli attempts were to intimidate the press crews and force them to leave. (Source.)

Do not fear these Zionist terrorists, including the Christian Zionists in the U.S. who support these acts of terrorism.

Their days will soon come to an end.

While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:3)

Comment on this article at HealthImpactNews.com.

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