New details in Hezbollah pager attack point to supply-chain breach by Israel

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. BEIRUT—A picture began to emerge Wednesday of a highly complex attack carried out by Israel, after thousands of pagers carried by members of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah exploded around the same time a day earlier. Many of the affected pagers were from a new shipment that Hezbollah had received recently, part of a nearly yearlong process to swap out older devices.

The group said they detonated in rough unison at 3:30 p.m. Survivors reported hearing the pagers beep and display a series of numbers on their screens about five seconds before they detonated. According to people familiar with Hezbollah’s investigation, the initial assessment is the pagers detonated because an explosive device was planted in the new models.

The scenario indicates Israel found its way into Hezbollah’s supply chain to modify the devices that were delivered. Osher Assor, managing partner at Israeli cybersecurity consulting firm, Auren, said that based on the footage of the explosions it was clear that the explosives were inserted into the devices ahead of time since lithium batteries catch fire before exploding. Assor said that such an operation would have taken a long period to plan, at least a year, according to his assessment.

He noted that the batch of tampered pagers continued to work regularly until the moment they were activated with a specific signal. “The moment the specific message arrived, the devices were activated," he said. “This is unprecedented—both the size and the scale—we haven’t seen something like that before." Hezbollah operatives said the group was still reeling from the attack Wednesday, trying to comprehend the extent of the breach and how Israel had managed it.