“This was a supply chain interception where the devices in question were obviously or allegedly intercepted," he explains. “The circuit boards were modified to contain, obviously, a rather small amount of explosive, which then was detonated allegedly by a radio signal, whichever way, shape or form. So essentially what we're talking about is a cyber-physical attack more than anything else, where, by definition, you use cyber instruments to cause physical damage, which this, at the end of the day, was.”
According to Hilse, booby trapping a large number of pagers this way is not difficult if the perpetrator has “access to a plant that can manufacture the chipset of these pagers in question.”
“You know, it's rather easy to then modify the devices or modify the boards themselves to then go and replace the circuit board,” he says. “So essentially you would intercepted the delivery, which probably went through a part of the world where that is possible, then you open all the packages, you unscrew probably 5 or 6 screws, then assemble the new circuit board with the added explosives into the device and then you close them up again.”
As for whether such a feat could be accomplished without the involvement of Western intelligence services, Hilse suggests that the Israelis themselves “have very clever cookies in their intelligence domain.”
Meanwhile, Ankara-based security and political analyst Dr. Hasan Selim Ozertem argues that the pager explosions indicate an apparent “problem in the logistics and security services of Hezbollah.”
“It seems that after Hassan Nasrallah called for leaving the smartphones and starting using pagers, human couriers or landlines, it seems that they imported thousands of pagers to Lebanon and, probably, mass imports resulted in such a weakness,” he says.
He also speculates that, as the image of the Israeli intelligence was tarnished somewhat by the October 7 Hamas attack, they could have attempted to restore their reputation through such an act.
Regarding the possible ramifications of the pager incident, Dr. Ozertem wonders how it might affect flight safety measures.
“If such telecommunication devices can be manipulated from now on, mobile phones or laptops can be used as such assassination devices or such explosives in international flights. Such precedents can be used by international terrorist organizations as well,” he warns.