Mossad's pager operation: Inside Israel's penetration of Hezbollah

[Zorro]

In the initial sales pitch to Hezbollah two years ago, the new line of Apollo pagers seemed precisely suited to the needs of a militia group with a sprawling network of fighters and a hard-earned reputation for paranoia.

The AR924 pager was slightly bulky but rugged, built to survive battlefield conditions. It boasted a waterproof Taiwanese design and an oversized battery that could operate for months without charging. Best of all, there was no risk that the pagers could ever be tracked by Israel’s intelligence services. Hezbollah’s leaders were so impressed they bought 5,000 of them and began handing them out to mid-level fighters and support personnel in February.

None of the users suspected they were wearing an ingeniously crafted Israeli bomb. And even after thousands of the devices exploded in Lebanon and Syria, few appreciated the pagers’ most sinister feature: a two-step de-encryption procedure that ensured most users would be holding the pager with both hands when it detonated.

As many as 3,000 Hezbollah officers and members — most of them rear-echelon figures — were killed or maimed, along with an unknown number of civilians, according to Israeli, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials, when Israel’s Mossad intelligence service triggered the devices remotely on Sept. 17.

https://wapo.st/3NfkRNV

[underpants]

1. No Paywall link.

As it turned out, the actual production of the devices was outsourced and the marketing official had no knowledge of the operation and was unaware that the pagers were physically assembled in Israel under Mossad oversight, officials said. Mossad’s pagers, each weighing less than three ounces, included a unique feature: a battery pack that concealed a tiny amount of a powerful explosive, according to the officials familiar with the plot.
In a feat of engineering, the bomb component was so carefully hidden as to be virtually undetectable, even if the device was taken apart, the officials said. Israeli officials believe that Hezbollah did disassemble some of the pagers and may have even X-rayed them.
Also invisible was Mossad’s remote access to the devices. An electronic signal from the intelligence service could trigger the explosion of thousands of the devices at once. But, to ensure maximum damage, the blast could also be triggered by a special two-step procedure required for viewing secure messages that had been encrypted.
“You had to push two buttons to read the message,” an official said. In practice, that meant using both hands


https://archive.is/2024.10.05-233452/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/05/israel-mossad-hezbollah-pagers-nasrallah/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzI4MTAwODAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzI5NDgzMTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3MjgxMDA4MDAsImp0aSI6ImIxYzQ1YjZlLWYzMmItNGRiYy05YjkzLWFjN2UwODNkNWNkMSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS93b3JsZC8yMDI0LzEwLzA1L2lzcmFlbC1tb3NzYWQtaGV6Ym9sbGFoLXBhZ2Vycy1uYXNyYWxsYWgvIn0.W7Fqcro3Gkry8Hq4ESS06CD70aK2STZDHQ4YHO4Q7BM