On September 17, 2024, massive pager explosions occurred among Hezbollah militants. At least 16 people died as a result. Between 3000 and over 4000 people were wounded. More than 500 militants lost their eyesight. The second wave of attacks began on the evening of September 18, 2024, when explosions of radios and electronic equipment killed at least 14 people and injured more than 450. “Hezbollah called the incident a cyberattack and blamed Israel for it. Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog said that his country was not involved in the incidents with the explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies among members of the Hezbollah group in Lebanon.
The news of the pager explosions spread around the world and sparked a lot of speculation, versions and theories about how it could have happened. For example, the Reuters news agency reported that Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, had planted explosives in five thousand pagers several months before they exploded. According to BBC sources, the Israeli intelligence services could have simply hacked the pagers. According to Sky News Arabia‘s sources, the pagers were actually equipped with tetranitropentaerythritol, an explosive containing nitric acid ester used to equip detonator capsules, and the explosion could have occurred when someone increased the temperature of the batteries.
We decided to find out how this operation was technically carried out, what its consequences were, and remind you about personal call receivers (pagers). We also found out whether they exist in Ukraine today.
Hezbollah’s explosive pagers: the technical aspect
First, a little history. What is a pager? This is an archaic personal call receiver. It is a miniature radio. To send a message to a pager, you need to call a paging company and tell the operator the text and number of the recipient. The operator sends the message from the computer to the paging console, where it is encoded and then transmitted to the radio transmitter. Within a short period of time (from 15 seconds to 5 minutes), the message reaches the recipient.
These devices receive messages that come in on their frequency. Most of them are only capable of receiving information. It is believed that pager users cannot be tracked through GPS. This is why Hezbollah fighters preferred them to cell phones. When the pager receives a message, it beeps or vibrates, and a short text is displayed on the screen, often a request to call back or come to a certain place.
In 2022, the former Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah (who was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces on September 27, 2024) banned the militants from using cell phones out of fear of Israeli surveillance. According to The New York Times, it was then that the operation to supply the militants with “explosive pagers” manufactured by an Israeli front company began.
A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah has ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan’s Gold Apollo. The source even showed a photo of the AP924 pager model.
The Taiwanese company Gold Apollo denied any involvement, claiming that the pagers bearing its name were manufactured by the Hungarian company BAC Consulting. The New York Times, citing 12 former and current Israeli intelligence and defense officials, wrote that BAC Consulting was indeed part of the Israeli cover-up.
While everything is gradually becoming clearer about the manufacturers of these pagers and the participants in the event, questions remain about how the operation was carried out. Perhaps someday there will even be movies and TV series about it. Could these pagers have been hacked remotely? Or was it more likely that they were simply physically packed with explosives? Vitaly Yakushev, cybersecurity expert and director of 10Guards, believes that it was a very thorough and professional preparation, the initiation of these explosions was remote, not through hacking, but because there was a hardware and software bookmark soldered into the pager itself. It activated the explosion on a specific signal.
According to him, the signal could have been a call from a number or a message, which the program perceived as a hardware trigger, such as closing contacts and setting off explosives. “So there was no remote hacking of pagers. Everything was initially integrated with physical access to the devices, and the activation was already remote. There are no questions here,” the expert said.
Vitaliy also noted that the lithium batteries used catch fire when depressurized and come into contact with oxygen in the air. “Lithium is an active metal, so the explosives were placed together with the battery to add power to the explosion. That is, it was not the battery itself that exploded. The explosives were used to increase the power,” Yakushev explained.
According to cybersecurity expert Konstantin Korsun, after all the facts and statements, it is clear that the explosives were still in batteries or accumulators.
“It seems to me that this is not a simple explosive. It’s undetectable, it’s inside a metal case, it can’t be sniffed, and a small amount of it has a much greater effect. I think this is the most technologically advanced achievement of the Israeli intelligence services. As for the bombing, that’s where the technology comes in. This is the second major achievement, although there is nothing new in principle. There are well-known commands that you send to devices. Each model has its own set of symbols, commands, or codes, and these codes cause problems, such as freezing. There were cases of rapid battery overheating. The Israelis knew about it. They combined long-known technologies to remotely overheat the battery. You don’t even need to hack into it, there’s nothing to hack into,” Kostiantyn noted.
According to him, Israeli experts knew the teams that overheated the batteries and invented a special explosive, which was micro-introduced into the battery. When the battery overheated to a certain temperature, either the rate of heating or the reaching of a certain temperature mark, it would initiate an explosion.
“This is a combination of all known technologies. The only thing is the explosive, the detonator. This is where the Israelis have done a good job, and you can feel the R&D direction. This is an elegant combination of technologies into something new, a new vector of attack. “Hezbollah switched to pagers because it recognized its defeat in the electronic and cyber warfare with Israel. Israel is totally dominant, and Hezbollah cannot, does not know, does not know how to resist this. That’s why they rolled back to pre-digital technologies. A pager is fundamentally different in that it is an ‘analog’ device and has no transmitting antenna, it does not transmit location, it cannot be detected by electronic intelligence,” Korsun explained.
How to securely transfer information: devices, messengers
The massive explosions of not only pagers, but also radios, solar panels, and other devices in Lebanon and Syria have once again raised questions about the security of information transmission and the security of devices in general. We all know that our smartphones have software installed on them. This software often contains vulnerabilities that can be used to remotely hack into devices.
Vitaliy Yakushev says that the Israelis are among the world’s best IT specialists, and they have a famous program called Pegasus that allows them to remotely hack iPhones and Android phones. “Pagers that don’t have an operating system are primitive devices. It is almost impossible to hack them remotely. That is why they are used. Just like radios are used, for example, at the front. But there is also a radio channel for transmitting information. Therefore, the message can still be intercepted and read,” the expert said.
Kostiantyn Korsun also confirms this statement. According to him, security and a pager are absolutely incompatible things, and modern messengers are a hundred times safer than these personal call receivers.
According to the expert, it is relatively safe to transfer information via messengers, video calls, and video conferences. “As for devices, last year I attended a presentation of a mega-super-secure device in Kyiv. It is as secure as possible, but as inconvenient as possible. There was also an interesting story, worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, about how police sold the ANOM messenger to international drug bosses. Two Australian cops over a beer came up with the idea to create it, turned to their American colleagues, they got the funding, and this great story happened. Then, simultaneously, more than 600 arrests took place around the world, and searches were conducted on all continents,” Kostiantyn said.
He also believes that these stories essentially discredit the very idea of an existing secure messenger or hardware solution, because nothing is absolute in the world. “There is Signal, Threema – they are American (Threema is developed by a Swiss company – editor’s note). It’s hard to say whether the NSA has access to them. Global drug lords are very interested in having a reliable, secret, secure messenger. And despite the fact that they have colossal billions, their experts are trying to combine technical methods with conventional security methods. As for Telegram, I have never used it and have been campaigning against it. I have always tried to convey to people that Telegram is a completely Russian evil,” Korsun summarized.
A little history of pagers in the world and Ukraine
Pagers appeared back in the early 1950s as a new way to notify and transmit short messages. They were also called personal radio informers. They simply emitted a beeping sound that alerted you to call back a specific number. Motorola was a pioneer in the development of this technology, as in 1956 it released the first mass pager – Handie-Talkie Radio Pocket Pager.
The first pagers were available mainly to doctors, rescuers, and special services, as they allowed them to respond quickly to emergency calls. In the 1970s, these devices were upgraded to allow for text messaging, which greatly expanded their use. In the 1980s and 1990s, pagers became an integral part of the lives of millions. They were used for quick communication both in the professional sphere and in everyday life. At the peak of its popularity, there were more than 60 million pager users in the world. The video in the Intenational Paging Corporation’s commercial shows the simplicity of the pager👇
According to media reports, in 1993, the revenue of paging market players reached $2.6 billion, and in the US in 1999, $3.2 billion was spent on these services, after which the companies’ revenue plummeted to $361 million in 2009.
In Ukraine, pagers were popular in the 90s, but when mobile communication appeared and became cheaper, they became a thing of the past. Back then, pagers were something of an element of wealth and fashion. They were used by ambulance workers, police, and people with money. Sometimes, the device was ostentatiously attached to a belt to emphasize their status. Pagers were also often called “beepers”. The operator who transmitted the message would mark it with a code signal unique to each pager. A new message could be detected by a distinctive “beep” sound. Now it is no longer possible to obtain a license for such communication in Ukraine.
Vitaliy Yakushev says that it is theoretically possible to set up a paging infrastructure in Ukraine, but he sees no point in using it, both from a security and common sense perspective. “As far as I know, the last paging subscriber in Ukraine was disconnected in 2003,” the expert said.
Konstantin Korsun said that anyone who understands radio engineering can set up a paging system at will. “In principle, it is possible locally. Even some countries, companies in Africa, Southeast Asia, in those regions with the poorest population, are doing this, because paging is not convenient, not secure, but it is cheap. You can build it on your knees. To do this, you need to purchase a batch of pagers and a transmitting antenna, and employ an operator. Judging by the fact that Hezbollah has ordered 5,000 pagers, someone is producing them,” Korsun concluded.
What are the consequences of the “pager” operation?
It seems that the “pager” operation was a kind of trigger that led to the beginning of mass liquidations of Hezbollah leaders. Thus, the Israeli army announced the destruction in southern Lebanon of the commander of Hezbollah’s missile unit, Mohammed Ismail, his deputy, Hussein Ismail, and several other commanders. And the Financial Times detailed how Israeli intelligence had been collecting information for almost 20 years to eliminate Hezbollah’s chief leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an IDF strike on the Lebanese capital on September 27, 2024. The Israeli army also reported that on September 30, 2024, it launched a “limited operation” in southern Lebanon, targeting the Lebanese Hezbollah group’s facilities in the border areas.
Israeli military observer Yigal Levin confirmed to us that we are now seeing the consequences of these “pager” attacks. “Israel is conducting a ground operation. After this ‘pager’ attack and the attacks with walkie-talkies on the second day, Israel began to kill Hezbollah leaders, including the organization’s Secretary General Nasrallah. And including all the military leaders who were responsible for intelligence, for counterintelligence, for missiles, for logistics, for the delivery of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon. And they continue to destroy them, yesterday and today there were liquidations, and they continue. And after disorganizing Hezbollah’s capabilities, Israel launched a ground operation and is fighting in Lebanon,” the analyst said.
According to him, after these “pager” explosions, the militants were instructed to get rid of pagers and not to use certain radios. “They will have some shuffling in terms of devices. It’s been a few weeks now, they should have woken up to it by now. Obviously, you can’t put explosives in every device, but the transition to regular phones allows us to track certain militants,” the observer said.
There is currently no information about the message that led to the detonation of the explosives in the pagers, but Yigal Levin believes that it was most likely a message that the militants expected from their leadership. So they held the pagers up to their eyes to read it. That is why there were many who lost their eyes and faces. “More than 1,000 people were injured, 1,500 people were left without arms, without asses (pardon me), without faces and without eyes. That is, some kind of message was sent,” the Israeli military expert summarized.
Time will tell what to expect next, but it seems that the consequences of the “pager” attacks will be discussed for a long time, and the details of the operation itself will become known, perhaps in years to come, because Israel does not like publicity.
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