As pagers are became bombs, are our smartphones secure?

The coordinated explosion of thousands of pagers and radios used by members of Hezbollah across Lebanon and Syria earlier this week marked a new dawn of clandestine warfare.

The shockingly coordinated and devastatingly effective attack, widely seen as the work of Israel‘s Mossad secret service, injured thousands of militants, not to mention many civilians. 

Lebanese authorities on Thursday banned radios and pagers from being taken on flights from Beirut airport while Hezbollah, still reeling from the devastating blasts, is scrambling to re-establish a secure command and communication network.

But the unsettling incident has also sparked fears over whether such tactics could extend to the technology used by millions every single day – the likes of our cherished smartphones, tablets and smartwatches.

In 2011, a tall tale surfaced about Steve Jobs and the team of Apple engineers tasked with creating the first iPod.

The story goes that, after months if not years of painstaking research, development and cutting-edge engineering, the team presented their CEO with their cherished prototype – only for Jobs to immediately reject it for being too big.

When the engineers protested that it was simply impossible to make it smaller, Jobs strode over to an aquarium and tossed the device into the water.

As air bubbles escaping from the prototype rose to the surface, he barked: ‘That means there’s space in there. Make it smaller.’

Apple connoisseurs and tech enthusiasts have long debated whether the anecdote is fact or fiction.

But it perfectly encapsulates the start of a trend that has now endured for decades – the race to make our tech smaller and sleeker.

Experts have speculated that Israeli agents were able to booby-trap Hezbollah’s pagers and radios by inserting a small quantity of high explosives into their internal workings.

This vulnerability simply no longer exists with today’s technology.

No space in a modern smartphone, tablet or watch is wasted. Each device is designed with ruthless precision, stuffed with hardware and packaged as tightly and efficiently as possible.

What’s more, the majority of today’s devices are no longer modular. 

Unlike an old pager, made up of replaceable parts with plenty of internal spaces, you can’t replace your modern phone’s battery by simply unclipping the casing and sliding it out – the device comes sealed as one unit. 

These features mean that a nefarious actor seeking to plant explosives inside a phone produced in recent years would need an extremely impressive technical capability.

Not only would a saboteur need to be able to unpackage, modify and repackage the device leaving no marks, but any such modification would likely result in some kind of malfunction such as noticeably reduced battery life, concerning heat production or a lack of functionality. 

Most gadgets undergo rigorous performance and safety testing both during and after the manufacturing process, so any such issues would almost certainly be detected before a device makes its way into the hands of the end consumer. 

Dr Lukasz Olejnik, visiting senior research fellow of Department of War Studies of King’s College, confirmed to MailOnline: ‘Most modern smartphones are constructed in ways that such tampering could be anywhere from very difficult to nearly impossible.’

Nicholas Reece, a computer researcher at New York University, added: ‘There would need to be enough physical space inside the smart phone enclosure to put the explosives, which is unlikely the case with any modern smartphone. 

‘The enclosures are also more difficult to open and reclose in a way that does not affect the phone or cannot be detected.’

Much of the speculation around the attack on Hezbollah has focused on how the perpetrators managed to tamper with the devices before they arrived in Lebanon.

The details of the feat remain extremely murky, but Lebanese security sources believe Israeli spies managed to modify the devices ‘at the production level’.

Analysts and officials claim that an Israeli-operated front company likely oversaw one stage of the manufacturing process, ensuring the fatal charges could be introduced without interruption or detection before being shipped to Lebanon.

‘The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner,’ a Lebanese security source told Reuters.

The working theory is that an Israeli operator sent an error code to the affected devices which caused them to beep or vibrate incessantly.

When the user hit the button to cancel the alert, they activated the detonator and the device blew up in their hands.

But interrupting the supply chain of a modern smartphone or tablet is a far harder task.

Though decades of globalisation mean that most of our tech is produced thousands of kilometres away and shipped around the world, the production process is now extremely efficient.

Not only are modern technology production lines fast and accurate, they also operate under strict security measures to prevent details of the products from leaking to competitors.

Modern phones, especially high-end models like iPhones or flagship Android models are also constructed using automated robotic assembly processes.

Yet another layer of protection comes from the sheer volume of devices produced.

The halcyon devices intercepted and modified – likely by Mossad – were produced as part of a small production run by small retailers for one single client – Hezbollah.

Disrupting that supply chain is simply not comparable to infiltrating a major manufacturer that is consistently mass-producing millions upon millions of devices each year.

‘There will be curiosity (from major manufacturers) but their production and delivery chains are completely different to small-scale companies, including vendors of counterfeit transceivers,’ Dr Olejnik said.

‘There’s no reason to consider that they may be affected.’ 

That said, it is highly likely that organisations the world over from intelligence agencies to terrorists and criminal networks will be assessing the attack on Hezbollah with a mind to adding such a tactic to their arsenals. 

Philip Ingram, a former senior British military intelligence officer and security expert, told iNews: ‘There are real risks of copycat actions. A large organised crime group could do something like this – small numbers of devices have been compromised in different ways in the past.’

Though pagers and radios were largely rendered obsolete by the advent of smartphones, there remains a persistent market for them because they are deemed as more reliable and secure – at least from digital attacks.

These devices run on batteries and radio waves, making them impervious to dead zones without WiFi, basements without cell service, hackings and catastrophic network collapses such as those during the 9/11 attacks.

Some medical professionals and emergency workers prefer pagers, and they are in widespread use for workers in remote locations, such as oil rigs and mines. 

Crowded restaurants use them, too, handing patrons blinking, hockey puck-like contraptions that vibrate when your table is ready.