How Israel Got Hezbollah’s Pager Number

A digital Trojan horse, but suckering Troy into buying the horse online instead of left outside the gates, and then let the Trojans pick who gets the personalized attack.
From the NY Times:

In Lebanon, as Israel picked off senior Hezbollah commandos with targeted assassinations, their leader came to a conclusion: If Israel was going high-tech, Hezbollah would go low. It was clear, a distressed Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said, that Israel was using cellphone networks to pinpoint the locations of his operatives.

“You ask me where is the agent,” Mr. Nasrallah told his followers in a publicly televised address in February. “I tell you that the phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the agent.”

Then he issued a plea.

“Bury it,” Mr. Nasrallah said. “Put it in an iron box and lock it.”

He had been pushing for years for Hezbollah to invest instead in pagers, which for all their limited capabilities could receive data without giving away a user’s location or other compromising information, according to American intelligence assessments.

Israeli intelligence officials saw an opportunity.

Even before Mr. Nasrallah decided to expand pager usage, Israel had put into motion a plan to establish a shell company that would pose as an international pager producer.

By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.

B.A.C. did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.

The pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 in small numbers, but production was quickly ramped up after Mr. Nasrallah denounced cellphones.

Some of Mr. Nasrallah’s fears were spurred by reports from allies that Israel had acquired new means to hack into phones, activating microphones and cameras remotely to spy on their owners. According to three intelligence officials, Israel had invested millions in developing the technology, and word spread among Hezbollah and its allies that no cellphone communication — even encrypted messaging apps — was safe anymore.

Not only did Mr. Nasrallah ban cellphones from meetings of Hezbollah operatives, he ordered that the details of Hezbollah movements and plans never be communicated over cellphones, said three intelligence officials. Hezbollah officers, he ordered, had to carry pagers at all times, and in the event of war, pagers would be used to tell fighters where to go.

Over the summer, shipments of the pagers to Lebanon increased, with thousands arriving in the country and being distributed among Hezbollah officers and their allies, according to two American intelligence officials.

To Hezbollah, they were a defensive measure, but in Israel, intelligence officers referred to the pagers as “buttons” that could be pushed when the time seemed ripe.

That moment, it appears, came this week.

This is quite the operation on multiple levels. First there is the ruse of getting not only rigged devices but making sure Hezbollah’s network acquired them. Then there is the tech to be able to detonate at a designated time. Tactically, hitting something like 3,000 terrorist all at once in a highly targeted way is unprecedented. Strategically, not only are those injured now limited, but Hezbollah in essence self-identified their own network, many of whom will be permanently, physically marked by wounds.

There was collateral damage, and reports of children and civilians being wounded and killed are coming out. When you launch an operation involving explosives, like Israel did here, that is something that has to be answer for. Still, the cries from Hezbollah, supporters, and sympathizers that this attack is a “crime against humanity” rings hollow, since if Hezbollah remotely detonated a device at a bus stop or market in Tel Aviv that’s all SOP for the terrorist organization. That is the difference between a sovereign nation like Israel that can be dealt with, pressured, and held accountable, and the terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and their financial state backers to whom all dead are equally useful to the cause.

Counterterrorism, especially on the international level that Israel is dealing with, is a game of action and reaction. This pager operation was a really big stick Israel has clearly been planning for years and decided to use now. Now Hezbollah and other terrorist organization will adapt and retaliate. Meaning Israel will again have to adapt.

And round and round we go. But, one would assume, with less pagers in the future.