Israeli Intelligence demonstrated its extremely rare capabilities to the rest of the world.
Intelligence Operations especially the external intelligence wings of various countries are no doubt in awe at such ingenuity & precision.
More than three thousand Hezbollah members including top commanders were injured in this simultaneous hacked-booby trapped pager operations.
These series of blasts reportedly involved Taiwanese, Japanese, American, and European-made devices in Lebanon on September 17 and 18 and have prompted grave security concerns worldwide.
"Weaponizing mobile communications devices will fill many people with horror and fear,” Marc Ostwald, chief economist at ADM Investor Services International said. “It may, at the margin, dampen demand."
The Lebanese government attributed the attack to Israel, accusing Tel Aviv of an outright act of terrorism.
Given almost "unconditional support" provided to Israel by some Western countries, some of them may have colluded with Tel-Aviv, said Hasan Abdullah, analyst and researcher at Global Security and Strategy Institute.
"The US is going to be the country that's going to generate the greatest trust deficit with their customers, primarily because of its very close collaboration with Israel,"
The US has long been one of the largest suppliers of communication equipment, including for military needs, to the Global South, adding that blasts could alienate the developing world from Western producers.
Earlier, researchers Mehmet Rakipoglu and military analyst Alexei Leonkov said they did not rule out US involvement in the Lebanon attack.
The Intercept reported on Wednesday that the US military had explored the possibility of planting remote-activated bombs in innocuous devices starting from the 1960s.
Middle East and other developing countries could eventually turn to Russian, Chinese or Turkish tech firms out of fear that the US involvement could compromise their security, Abdullah said.
Ostwald and Abdullah believe that several measures could be taken to stop the covert bombings, starting with investigations into manufacturing processes and ending with the deployment of international watchdogs to oversee production and supply.
Are we safe with our electronic devices?
Lebanon is reeling in the wake of 48 hours of terror attacks blamed on Israeli intelligence targeting Hezbollah through a series of coordinated explosions of electronic devices.
Which companies, brands and devices are involved?
Handheld communications equipment makers are in damage control mode after on Tuesday and Wednesday’s series of explosions across Lebanon, which have left scores of people dead and thousands injured.
For the privacy minded, the acts of terror add terrifying new risk, demonstrating that intelligence services can use your devices to not just spy on you, but kill you without provocation or due process, if you fall on their bad side. Here’s what we know about the companies whose products were involved in the Lebanon attacks:
1.Gold Apollo: This Taiwanese manufacturer of alphanumeric pagers, restaurant and hospitality wireless solutions is at the center of events, with the company’s AR924 series pagers exploding en masse (up to 5,000 simultaneously) in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday. Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang told media the pagers in question were manufactured under license by BAC Consulting KFT, a shady Hungary-based subcontractor registered in 2022 with just one employee and run out of a small building in a residential neighborhood of Budapest with no visible outside presence.
Hsu claims Gold Apollo did not design or manufacture the deadly pagers - each thought to have been stuffed with three grams of explosives. Reached for commentary, BAC Consulting CEO Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, an LSE and University of London graduate and former European Commission advisor, told US media she did “not make the pagers” and was “just the intermediary.” A government spokesman said in a statement that BAC Consulting has no manufacturing presence in Hungary.
It is worth to note that such an operation owe to have involved various global mobile equipment approval boards and the general GSM databases.And remember that most of these companies that grant global identification are from European countries e.g you will find that of gadgets manufactured in most Asian countries carry an IMEI from BABT(British Approval Board for Telecommunication and we cannot rule out the fact MOSSAD may have had a smooth hand to indirectly extract information that helped it in the planning and execution of this operation.On the various mobile operating system of which there is the popular"Android" which is a google initiated OS,if you have been following this blog then you owe to have read our posts on the relationship between google and the CIA or NSA(US intelligence and domestic security bodies).
2.Icom Incorporated: Osaka-headquartered radio, wireless LAN and SIP solutions maker Icom is the other company widely implicated, via its explosive IC-V82 VHF series of handheld walkie-talkies. The company cannot confirm the shipment of its products to Lebanon, and said the manufacture of this particular transceiver was halted in 2014. Icom assured that it sells its wares only through authorized distributors, and has had problems with counterfeiters using its brand.
3.Lebanese media have reported that other electronic devices also exploded in this week’s carnage, from home solar energy systems and car batteries to electric scooters, fingerprint-reading devices, laptops and smartphones, including iPhones. These reports have yet to be independently verified.
Apple has taken its share of blows to its reputation in recent years from manufacturing faults causing iPhones to randomly catch fire or explode while charging, and scandals related to intelligence agencies using its products to spy on users, but no past publicly reported incidents involving iPhones being deliberately used as makeshift explosive devices.
The breadth and extent of the reported attacks has prompted some observers to suggest that batteries sold by shady third party suppliers may have been involved.
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