Pagers likely booby-trapped by explosive charge during delivery, cyber-security expert says

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00:00Militant group Hezbollah is tonight warning that it will get just retribution

00:04as it blames Israel for a spree of pager blasts across Lebanon. The attack has

00:10left nine people dead and up to 3,000 more injured, among them the Iranian

00:15ambassador to Beirut. The detonations came just hours after Israel announced

00:19that it was broadening the aims of its war in Gaza to include its fight against

00:24Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon. With the latest here's Rawad Taha in

00:29Beirut.

00:33I'm standing here in front of the emergency entrance for the American

00:37University of Beirut Medical Center where more than 200 injured people have

00:42been transported from various areas in Beirut and Beirut's southern suburbs as

00:47a result of the pagers attack that occurred later this afternoon in Lebanon.

00:53Now as a wrap-up thousands of pager devices primarily used by Hezbollah

00:59members and Hezbollah officials exploded between the time of 3.30 p.m. and 4 p.m.

01:04Beirut time. This resulted in more than 2,750 injured people as of the latest

01:12official death toll by the Ministry of Health along with more than 10 killed

01:16including a number of civilians and including a number of sons of Hezbollah

01:23parliament members. Now this is still an unfolding story the number of injured of

01:30those injured as I mentioned is very large. Most hospitals in Lebanon are

01:35pre-occupied and are at full capacity. Calls for blood donations were set up in

01:41different areas in Beirut and in Lebanon's south. This is the scene for

01:49today close to a science fiction movie one can say. Rawat Taha reporting there

01:55from Beirut. Well to discuss what may have been behind these mysterious blasts

01:59we're joined now by Jérôme Billoy, cyber security expert for consultancy firm

02:05Wavestone. Thank you so much for being with us on the program this evening

02:09Jérôme. Footage that we've seen coming from Lebanon appears to show that some

02:15of these detonations took place after the pagers rang. Are we any closer to

02:20knowing how exactly this attack was organized, how it took place?

02:25Thank you for having me here tonight. Exactly how the attack took place it's a good question and it's

02:32still investigation, it's still ongoing. What is the most probable scenario

02:36tonight is that the pager that has been in use by Hezbollah for the last weeks

02:43and maybe a couple of months have been trapped during the delivery of the

02:49equipment themselves. They have been trapped by adding an explosive charge

02:53within the device and by changing also the software within this pager for

02:59it to explode when it receives a very specific message asking it to detonate.

03:05And there's also speculation that perhaps the explosions might have been

03:08caused by the device's batteries detonating after they heated up. Do you

03:13think that would be enough to cause these kind of blasts?

03:16It's another scenario that is possible but honestly from what we see on the

03:23pictures and there are numerous pictures, video, the force of the explosion does

03:28not look like an usual battery explosion. If you look at previous cases of

03:34battery issues that could be caused also by software at some point, usually the

03:40battery first is getting very warm and then it took fire and then you have the

03:46time to react, to throw away the device and so and also the impact of the

03:53explosion, the force of the explosion is much more than what I have seen before

03:57from with battery exploding. So do you think these pages then, they were only

04:03recently introduced for Hezbollah fighters, do you think that it's likely

04:07that they would have been intercepted before they got to the militants or that

04:13they were perhaps tampered with electronically from a distance?

04:18The combination of both. If we are talking about the explosion, the explosive charge

04:23in the device, it must have been added at some point. It could have been added

04:29during the production of the devices themselves in the factory but it's very

04:35risky because you don't know exactly what pager will go to what client and so

04:40there could be, you know, other explosions in the world at that time as

04:44we speak. Here we have only explosions of devices related to Hezbollah or very

04:51close to Hezbollah. So the most probable scenario is that somewhere, certainly an

04:58intelligence agency was aware of this order of pager, numerous pager and they

05:04were able to intercept after the production these pagers to open the box

05:09very precisely to change the battery or to add an explosive into the battery and

05:15then to change the software as well to load this remote activation

05:22and then to close everything back like usual, like normal, and send it to the

05:29destination, to the Hezbollah members. And that's a very tricky approach. It's

05:35something that we know for sure that the intelligence agencies have been doing

05:39before. If you remember the Snowden revelations a few years back, it shows

05:44us that the NSA was able and was practicing exactly this delivery trap

05:49approach. And sources also say it wouldn't be the first time that Israeli

05:54intelligence forces have placed explosives in personal phones to target

05:58their enemies but Hezbollah was trying to get around that by bringing in a more

06:01low-tech means of communication among fighters but it seems not to have worked

06:08if Israel is actually found to have been behind this attack as is suspected by

06:12Lebanon. For sure, they decided to switch from usual phone like we all have, the

06:19iPhone, the Android, and so on and so forth, mainly due to the fact that they

06:24knew that it could be spied on, you know, you could easily for an intelligence

06:30agency, you could easily go into the phone, listen to the communication, listen

06:35to the files, finding the location of the device. So they decided to go for a

06:39low-tech approach with this pager and as it is right now the case, it really shows

06:47that it might not have been the best decision to take and especially I think

06:51they did not think about this ability to track the devices themselves, otherwise

06:57they would have checked the devices. And to be sure, this trap must have been

07:02really expertly done because, you know, these devices at some point you will

07:07open them, you will change the battery and so on and so forth, so it must have

07:12been an expert work to be able not to be detected in fact.

07:16There's no response as of yet from Israel. Well, thank you so much, Jérôme, for

07:21joining us this evening. That's Jérôme Billoy, cyber security expert for the

07:25consultancy firm Wavestone. Let's move on to...

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