"Supply chain attack" suggests that Hezbollah pager attack might be the work of insiders in conflict with brethren, not Mossad

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

Pagers were widely used before the proliferation of mobile phones in the late 1990s and early 2000s. (Wikimedia Commons/Kevster). From "What Is A Peger", Indian Express

The Hezbollah  pager  "supply chain attack" (as the BBC says it might be)  suggests that the Hezbollah pager attack might be  the work of insiders in conflict with brethren, and  not Mossad.  It is to be noted that even the Russians are being circumspect, avoinding any direct refewrence to Israel or Mossad and instead to "the organizers of this high-tech attack". 



The BBC has reported:


Analysts have been quick to express shock at the scale of Tuesday's attack - saying Hezbollah prides itself on its security measures.

Some suggested a hack may have caused the pager batteries to overheat, causing the devices to explode. Such an act would be unprecedented.

But many experts say that is unlikely, with footage of the explosions inconsistent with the batteries overheating.

Some analysts say ithat some sort of supply chain attack, which involved the pagers being tampered with during their manufacture or in transit, was more likely.

Supply chain attacks are a growing concern in the cyber-security world with many high-profile incidents recently caused by hackers gaining access to products while they are in development.

But these attacks are normally contained to software. Hardware supply chain attacks are far rarer as they involve getting hands on to the device.

If this was indeed a supply chain attack it would have involved a huge operation to secretly tamper with the pagers in some way.

Security officials in Lebanon say that the pagers were packed with a small amount of explosives months before the devices entered the country.




Additionally Rueters is reporting:

The senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 pagers from Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country earlier this year.
Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that Gold Apollo named in a statement as BAC.
"The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it," Hsu told reporters at the company's offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.
The stated address for BAC Consulting in Hungary's capital Budapest was a peach building on a mostly residential street in an outer suburb. The company name was posted on the glass door on an A4 sheet.
A person at the building who asked not to be named said BAC Consulting was registered there but did not have a physical presence. The CEO of BAC Consulting, Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono says on her LinkedIn profile that she has worked as an adviser for various organisations including UNESCO. She did not respond to emails from Reuters.
BAC's registered activities are wide ranging, from computer game publishing to IT consulting to crude oil extraction.

Meanwhile the Russians are being circumspect:

“We regard what happened as yet another act of hybrid warfare against Lebanon, which has harmed thousands of innocent people. It appears that the organizers of this high-tech attack deliberately sought to foment a large-scale armed confrontation in order to provoke a major war in the Middle East,” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, wrote in a statement.

The study of terrorist financing is primarily concerned with how, not why. 

The above suggests that the Hezbollah pager attack might be  the work of insiders in conflict with brethren, not Mossad.

END