2024-09-18 13:19:25
In Lebanon, thousands of pagers of Hezbollah terrorists exploded at the same time. Can smartphones also be manipulated in this way?
Nine dead and almost 3,000 injured: A coordinated attack caused thousands of pagers belonging to supporters of the pro-Iranian terrorist organization Hezbollah to explode in Lebanon on Tuesday. According to a Lebanese security official, the trigger was an encrypted message that was sent to the devices.
The nature of this attack raises many technical questions. Who had access to the devices and the associated data and when to coordinate such an attack? And can other devices – such as laptops or smartphones – be manipulated in a similar way and explode without warning?
Fortunately, this concern is unfounded. The idea that a smartphone could explode due to a simple text message is a common myth that often appears in action movies and science fiction stories.
This is because smartphones do not contain any explosive materials. The components installed – such as batteries, processors, memory and displays – are designed to process and communicate information, but not to detonate. In addition, modern operating systems have numerous security precautions that prevent software from accessing hardware components without authorization.
Even if a malicious app tried to overcharge the battery or damage other components, these mechanisms would kick in and shut down the device or interrupt the process. Under certain circumstances, a smartphone battery can overheat, which in rare cases can even lead to a fire – but not an explosion.
In the case of the exploded pagers, the devices must have been manipulated in some way. As the New York Times reports, citing American officials, they were intercepted before arriving in Lebanon and loaded with explosives. A Lebanese security source told the Reuters news agency that Israeli agents were responsible for planting an explosive circuit board with a code in the device.
The situation is similar with more modern technical devices. “Anyone who wants to infect smartphones with malware definitely needs a security hole on the device,” says Rüdiger Trost from the Finnish security company WithSecure to t-online. However, these security holes are rare – and are therefore expensive to find on the black market, says the expert. Estimates suggest that several million euros are being offered for the so-called zero-day hole on the darknet.
“But even if someone has access to a security hole and knows how to exploit it, not all smartphones are automatically affected by such an attack,” Trost continued. Depending on the manufacturer and operating system, as well as the age of the device and the software installed on it, there is an individual risk for each device.
In the end, however, all technical devices have one thing in common: no SMS, WhatsApp or other message is capable of causing a laptop, smartphone or even a pager to explode without further ado – no matter how vulnerable the device is to security vulnerabilities.