Hack of Hezbollah Devices Exposes Dark Corners of Asia Supply Chains (msn.com) 77
Deadly attacks using booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon has revealed significant vulnerabilities in the supply chains for older electronic devices. The incident, which killed 37 people and injured about 3,000, has sparked investigations across Europe into the origins of the weaponized gadgets.
Taiwan-based Gold Apollo blamed a European licensee for the compromised pagers, while Japan's Icom could not verify the authenticity of the walkie-talkies bearing its name. Both companies denied manufacturing the deadly components in their home countries. Industry executives say older electronics from Asia often lack the tight supply chain controls of newer products, making it difficult to trace their origins. Counterfeiting, surplus inventories, and complex manufacturing deals further complicate the issue.
Taiwan-based Gold Apollo blamed a European licensee for the compromised pagers, while Japan's Icom could not verify the authenticity of the walkie-talkies bearing its name. Both companies denied manufacturing the deadly components in their home countries. Industry executives say older electronics from Asia often lack the tight supply chain controls of newer products, making it difficult to trace their origins. Counterfeiting, surplus inventories, and complex manufacturing deals further complicate the issue.
Genius (Score:3, Interesting)
I read somewhere that the pagers were sold by a shell company controlled by Israel. This means that not only did they infiltrate Hezbollah catastrophically, but Hezbollah paid for the privilege. This was a genius-level operation.
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Are you sure Mossad was really careful to make sure none of those products ended up anywhere else? Are you certain that they didn't put bombs in any other gear? And can anyone say with confidence that now it's a proven tactic, nobody else is going to try it?
This is a massive problem for supply chains and for distribution. How much more are you willing to pay for certified chains of custody that give you confidence that thing won't blow you up?
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But certifying the supply chain could cause prices to increase... and we can't have that!
I can't see a Walmart ad, where the smiley face bounces around the store adding "certified supply chain!" to their price labels, getting much traction.
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It's going to happen whether you like it or not. Businesses with demand it to cover their arses. Look at the damage being done to the companies that made these devices, and the ones that were in the supply chain.
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Certifying the supply chain would do nothing but make prices go up, do you really think a spy agency doesn't have the resources to fake a certification. That is exactly what spies do, their main job skill is to lie effectively.
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How much more are you willing to pay for certified chains of custody that give you confidence that thing won't blow you up?
How much more is some company willing to charge for pseudo-certified chains of custody that give you false confidence? That's the really scary question.
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Imagine some big supplier like Mouser or Digikey was involved in this. Some product they supplied turned out to have a Mossad or North Korean or terrorist (but I repeat myself) bomb in it. There are other suppliers who sell the same stuff, people have a choice.
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Well, evil genius. There is the little problem with killing children and civilians and generally making the world a less safe place.
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Reminds me of the stance that some historical German organizations had.
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Reminds me of the stance that every nation that ever went to war had.
Those German organizations did give a rat's ass about killing civilians and children they actively tried to kill them, they specifically rounded them up and killed them even once they where captive.
That is the key difference here, Jews where never an active threat to Germans in any way shape or form, their goal was to eliminate all Jews. Here Israel may want the land, but if every Palestinians packed up their bags an left, and the stopped
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They're too busy worrying about the several dozen children deliberately murdered on Oct 7, I guess.
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For context, wars usually have about 50% civilian casualty ratio, which can easily go up to 90% for urban warfare. If this boils over to a war, the civilian casualty ratio will be dramatically higher than the pager/walkie-talkie operation. And it will be worse than the usual ratio, for obvious reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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That is largely because recent conflicts tend to have the military too close to the civilians, also battle lines move too quickly to evacuate civilians before they're in a combat zone, and rocket and artillery ranges are longer then ever (inaccurate + explosive).
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I am clear on that. You merely stated what is likely a fact.
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But yeah, minimizing collateral damage (what a asinine euphemism!) seems to be of very little importance to several Nations out there. And of course, as demonstrated by these actions of the past few days.
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The civilians are not just complicit, they are fully part of the Hez war effort.
No one is innocent.
Lebanon is on the verge of being a "failed state"; Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization, controls less than half of the parliament, but basically all of the military power; and you think the entire population of civilians are complicit in anything they do and are fair game to be killed because of it?
I cannot find the words to express my disdain for your total lack of human empathy. Anonymous Coward is right.
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Oct 7 was actually Hamas. But Hezbollah is no better.
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No argument about that. But the rules of civilized warfare and morality say that if you copy a murderous enemy, you just become murderous yourself.
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I don't think the pager attack was in any way, shape or form a copy of the October 7th attack.
Pager attack was targeted and the vast majority of people hit in the attack were the ones being targeted. October 7th was an indiscriminate rampage, with the vast majority of victims being civilians.
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Did Israel enter Lebanon, murder a crowd at a peace and love music festival, rape women and children, then kidnap 200 Lebanese?
Damn, I thought they just targeted attacks at terrorists.
Well, no I'm convinced! Israel is definitely evil. Thanks for your help.
Was that Lebanon? (Score:2)
Did Israel enter Lebanon, murder a crowd at a peace and love music festival, rape women and children, then kidnap 200 Lebanese?
Damn, I thought they just targeted attacks at terrorists.
Well, no I'm convinced! Israel is definitely evil. Thanks for your help.
Was that Lebanon? I thought the attack was from the Gaza strip.
I thought the Gaza strip people were Hamas, and Lebanon people were Hisbollah, and that these people are different, have different cultures, and certain specific cultural points that lead to intense disagreements between the two peoples. (Although their interests sometimes align.)
Damn! I really need to go back and review the handbook of terrorists [state.gov] and get things straight.
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You do not understand how "morals" works, do you? Here is a hint: It does not allow you to do to others what they did to you. That is called "revenge" and generally considered to be a base impulse that is not helpful.
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Very true. But sometimes, if you don't copy them, you just die.
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In this case, no. In the general case, the question becomes how much of a monster you are willing to be in order to survive.
Re:Genius (Score:4, Insightful)
Hezbollah doesn't seem to have a "problem with killing children and civilians", so my sympathy for those Hezbollah people affected in those attacks is zero.
I have sympathy for people who were collateral damage, but as far as attacks go, this one probably had the lowest ratio of collateral to intentional damage of pretty much any counter-terrorism action in recent years.
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this one probably had the lowest ratio of collateral to intentional damage of pretty much any counter-terrorism action in recent years
That is because for example the US has repeatedly committed mass-murder of civilians in "counter-terrorism" in the past. Being less of a war-criminal is really not a great achievement and does not make the actions taken ok.
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So, people at a wedding that had no clue who else got invited, for example? You are a real Unmensch, nothing else.
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I do not weep for the Hitler Youth, and neither should you.
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The former Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth, presumedly against his will.
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When Hezbollah et:al decide to stop calling for the complete obliteration of Israel, we can talk. Till then no so much.
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Yeah, the Islamic terrorists do a lot of that, the killing of children and civilians.
There's no one involved on any side who doesn't have the blood of children on their hands.
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Yes. But Israel pretends to be a civilized nation. With its current leadership, it is not.
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So you approve of killing children, merely because of who their parents are? The Germans liked to do that too.
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Don't blame the Mossad for Hezbollah's wrongdoings.
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You can't call for Israel to pull punches when their adversaries not only want to A) kill everyone in Israel and regularly call for genocide against all Israelis, B) actually kidnap and murder civilians in an armed incursion, C) use suicide bombs to kill Israeli civilians on a regular basis, D) use their own people as human shields.
There's no clean fighting in the Middle East.
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Still it was MUCH more controlled that raining bombs or missiles to target that many terrorists.....in war you're always going to have collateral damage.
In this case it was radically minimized.
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> This was a genius-level operation.
Not really.
They were supposed to blow them as they invaded Lebanon but a tech in Lebanon reverse-engineered it and as soon as Israel got word they'd been found out they sent the blow code because it was more to their advantage.
The Lebanese were overly cautious about their analysis.
This is why so many children and other civilians were injured and killed.
Israel was not done trying to goad the DC Mafia into fighting their war in Iran (election concerns) so the opportunity
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Respectfully, evidence / news / link?
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
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It's concerning that Israel is willing to injure or kill civilians to get at its enemies in countries that it is at war with. Can you imagine if they bombed a hotel in your town where they claimed a Hezbollah "commander" was staying?
Don't blame Lebanon for not kicking them out. Lebanon couldn't if they wanted to, and if they did it would be about 8 seconds before Israel annexed part of their country and sent settlers there.
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Could Nasrallah is the mole. He has been the one encouraging Hezbollah to ditch their mobiles in favor of Pagers for 2 years now.
Also lack of quality control by the customer (Score:1)
Anybody that buys cheap electronics from Asia should know that you need to have a careful look at what you are getting. Fire hazards, electrocution hazards, explosion hazards (without actual explosives) are common and are non-functional, partially functional and unreliable products. That is not to say all Asian suppliers are bad. You can get good products even from China and it is not even hard. But you need to make sure. That quality control was obviously not done, but I bet it will be done now.
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And why would this get modded down? I see some useful idiot got mod-points by accident. Again.
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Got any more mod-points to waste, dumbfucks? Because I am still posting at +1, despite your dishonorable and dishonest efforts. I wonder why that is.
This could happen to anyone anywhere at any time (Score:1)
What's to stop some enemy of the U.S. doing this to us?
For that matter: what's to stop Israel from doing things like this to anyone, anywhere -- even us?
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It wouldn't make sense for someone to attempt this sort of attack against random people, because it's much too difficult and sophisticated. So it would be attempted only against a military target.
I would hope that Western militaries X-ray, disassemble, and examine in minute detail samples of anything they procure before distributing it in the field.
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The Israelis haven't caused damage to American targets on that scale since the USS Liberty incident in 1967. As for other possible aggressors, it would be easy for China to attempt such an attack on pretty much anyone.
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What a strange worry. Are you a terrorist buying a pager and a walky-talky to avoid being located via GPS as you fire missiles at civilians?
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What a strange worry. Are you a terrorist buying a pager and a walky-talky to avoid being located via GPS as you fire missiles indiscriminately at Israeli children and civilians?
The main export item from middle-east is islamic terrorism.
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For that matter: what's to stop Israel from doing things like this to anyone, anywhere -- even us?
Easy - they need us to pay for a significant part of their annual national budget. We give them billions in cash, every year.
Positive fallout? (Score:2)
Yes, I'm an optimist...
Hezbollah seems clueless (Score:2)
Hey Abdul! Some guy named Shlomo Goldberg just got me a great price on pagers!
Awesome, buy them, and make sure our technician Hyman Katzenberg takes a good look at them first!
Blockchain for supply chain (Score:2)