ETA:
Possibly not just walkie-talkies but other electronic devices as well.
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Call this what it is:
This idea has been at the back of my mind ever since I learned it’s possible to detonate an explosive with a mobile device, some decades ago.
I grokked that signals can go both ways.
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Wait, what now?
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Undercover agents, double agents, or someone disaffected by Hezbollah could have replaced the devices gradually. Another possibility could have been sabotage during routine maintenance. This operation may have been underway for more than a year or two.
I think the secondary objective of this wave of explosions was to cut off enemy communications. But the side effect was to create fear and confusion among the civilian population. I imagine people must be terrified of any device such as radios, cell phones and even notebooks.
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The other suggestion I’ve seen is that the walkie-talkies are knock-offs made by other companies.
ETA:
Earlier, a sales executive at the US subsidiary of Icom told The Associated Press news agency that the exploded radio devices in Lebanon appeared to be knockoff products that were not made the company – adding that it was easy to find counterfeit versions online.
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Probably fake companies run by Israeli agents.
ETA
Creating fake companies for shadow business is so easy…
ETA
[Israel’s Unit 8200: From Stuxnet to Hezbollah—A legacy of cyber mastery | Ctech calcalistech.com)]
[Unit 8200 - Wikipedia]
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10 years old doesnt mean the hezbollah had them for that timeframe; a “company” could have sold them simpley “refurbished” ones in the last couple of years.
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I’m not sure you could, actually. Only because modern flagship cell phones are so miniaturised that it would be impossible to find the physical space to add any explosives. I suppose you could replace the battery with a smaller one and fill the rest of the space with explosives, but that would betray itself through dramatically worse battery life.
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Erk!
I was thinking of replacing some of the batteries, but you are exactly right people would notice losing a third of the battery life.
Even if there is no change in battery behaviour to notice because it was like this from day one?
Besides, the battery in any consumer grade phone (or any other mobile thingy) is reasonable good, but never top of the line. Just a good compromise between runtime and production cost.
What’s to keep anyone setting up a production line to weaponise phones (that don’t have to be that cost effective in production) to make batteries with the same form factor than the original ones, but use better battery cells that can store a little more power in a little less space and use the saved volume for putting in explosives? Ending up with a battery that looks the same, weighs the same and has roughly the same electrical specs?
Also, who checks their phone battery in such a thorough way and keeps statistics?
(Yes, those people exist. Thankfully, usually in test labs and only a few out in the wild.)
Most people are conditioned to give the icon on the screen a glance and plug the thing in when they think they should. And that’s it because they have other things to take care of.
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Maybe. I’m assuming you would need to take out like a third to half the battery to have enough room for explosives.
While there is some variance in energy density between inexpensive and expensive LiIon batteries it is maybe 20%. So take out half the battery and boost the 50% life battery to 60%? Or take out a third and boost 66% to 79%. At about 80% of the predicted battery life, yeah I could buy people not noticing. Or not noticing reliably.
If a bargain basement cell phone uses LiFePO then you could probably match or near enough match by switching to LiIon.
I think a lot of cheap cellphones have poor battery life not due to batteries, but because other components are selected with an eye towards low price. So the slower CPU needs to run for an extra 40% more milliseconds to process each new email that comes in. The more expensive phone races to sleep faster and even though it uses more power during its time awake it gets back to sleep faster.
Maybe Android phones are enough of a commodity that a sufficiently motivated and resourced entity could take a specific low end phone and replace it with a high end phone with a smaller battery and make it act enough like the low end phone that nobody notices before boom time?
I hate to flip flop twice in the same thing, but I find your argument compelling too…
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Sounds like you might be able to do it for about 10% of the battery.
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That is a fascinating analysis, but what bunnie isn’t saying is how much explosive energy one 0.2mm layer of PETN actually has. Clearly he is of the opinion that it is enough, but how bad is this hypothetical attack vector?
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I think the last few days have shown conclusively that this attack vector is not hypothetical, highly effective and, well, bad.
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Oh, no doubt. It is horrible and the only reason I engage in this sort of technical speculation is as a coping strategy. But in that vein: we have seen that it works with what I would call old technology: pagers and walkie talkies aren’t miniaturised as effectively as possible. We all know that old technology often has surprising amounts of just air inside the shell. Boards and batteries are much smaller than the case. With modern phones this is different, especially if you want to hide the explosives from a sophisticated entity like a state protecting its supply chain. That’s the scenario bunnie is talking about, i.e. how in danger are we from cellphones in our daily life. And in that case the addition of one layer of PETN in the battery of a generic Android cellphone is a plausible attack vector apparently, I am just wondering how effective it would be.
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