Exploding batteries

[GB]

Without getting at all political, there's been a suggestion that the
pagers in Lebanon exploded through malware causing them to overheat. Can
I just check whether the assembled sages think that's at all a plausible
explanation, please?

[Andy Burns]

Post by GB
Without getting at all political, there's been a suggestion that the
pagers in Lebanon exploded through malware causing them to overheat. Can
I just check whether the assembled sages think that's at all a plausible
explanation, please?

Not a feasible explanation IMO. If mistreated, lithium batteries go
with a whoosh, not a bang.

[Gordon]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by GB
Without getting at all political, there's been a suggestion that the
pagers in Lebanon exploded through malware causing them to overheat. Can
I just check whether the assembled sages think that's at all a plausible
explanation, please?

Not a feasible explanation IMO. If mistreated, lithium batteries go
with a whoosh, not a bang.

The media have talked about a small amount of high explosive being in the
devices which were set off remotely.

[GlowingBlueMist]

Post by Gordon

Post by Andy Burns

Post by GB
Without getting at all political, there's been a suggestion that the
pagers in Lebanon exploded through malware causing them to overheat. Can
I just check whether the assembled sages think that's at all a plausible
explanation, please?

Not a feasible explanation IMO. If mistreated, lithium batteries go
with a whoosh, not a bang.

The media have talked about a small amount of high explosive being in the
devices which were set off remotely.

I definitely would not want to work for people in the supply chain where
they bought the pagers and radios. Someone had to be in place for quite
a while to covertly plant explosives in that many devices.

Makes one wonder how many other types of electronic devices have had
explosives installed and sold to the targeted audience and are waiting
for activation either through an internet or cellular trigger.

[Daniel James]

Post by GlowingBlueMist
I definitely would not want to work for people in the supply chain where
they bought the pagers and radios.  Someone had to be in place for quite
a while to covertly plant explosives in that many devices.

That all sounds a bit hit-and-miss ... I suspect someone obtained an
entire batch of devices, doctored them all, and then resold them to the
target ... or possibly someone learned that a shipment of devices was
destined for Lebanon and intercepted the package so that they could be
doctored.

The reports say that pagers and walkie-talkies were being used because
it was too easy to track and locate people by their cellphones. It seems
probable that the devices were bought in bulk from a single supplier.

[Jeff Gaines]

Post by Daniel James

Post by GlowingBlueMist
I definitely would not want to work for people in the supply chain where
they bought the pagers and radios.  Someone had to be in place for quite
a while to covertly plant explosives in that many devices.

That all sounds a bit hit-and-miss ... I suspect someone obtained an
entire batch of devices, doctored them all, and then resold them to the
target ... or possibly someone learned that a shipment of devices was
destined for Lebanon and intercepted the package so that they could be
doctored.
The reports say that pagers and walkie-talkies were being used because it
was too easy to track and locate people by their cellphones. It seems
probable that the devices were bought in bulk from a single supplier.

When solicitors got computers :-)

[Jeff Gaines]

Post by Jeff Gaines

Post by Daniel James

Post by GlowingBlueMist
I definitely would not want to work for people in the supply chain where
they bought the pagers and radios.  Someone had to be in place for quite
a while to covertly plant explosives in that many devices.

That all sounds a bit hit-and-miss ... I suspect someone obtained an
entire batch of devices, doctored them all, and then resold them to the
target ... or possibly someone learned that a shipment of devices was
destined for Lebanon and intercepted the package so that they could be
doctored.
The reports say that pagers and walkie-talkies were being used because it
was too easy to track and locate people by their cellphones. It seems
probable that the devices were bought in bulk from a single supplier.

When solicitors got computers :-)

I don 't know what went wrong there, that was supposed to be a reply to a
post in the legal group.

[Richard Kettlewell]

Post by Daniel James

Post by GlowingBlueMist
I definitely would not want to work for people in the supply chain
where they bought the pagers and radios.  Someone had to be in place
for quite a while to covertly plant explosives in that many devices.

That all sounds a bit hit-and-miss ... I suspect someone obtained an
entire batch of devices, doctored them all, and then resold them to
the target ... or possibly someone learned that a shipment of devices
was destined for Lebanon and intercepted the package so that they
could be doctored.

Past approaches have included buying the target’s entire supplier,
e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG.

[Theo]

Post by GB
Without getting at all political, there's been a suggestion that the
pagers in Lebanon exploded through malware causing them to overheat. Can
I just check whether the assembled sages think that's at all a plausible
explanation, please?

It's not.

If you dead short a lithium ion cell it swells, you get smoke, then some heat,
and then eventually it bursts and catches fire. Once it's caught fire it's
hard to put out (needs copious liquid to reduce the temperature out of the
danger zone). The cells in question are phone-sized, so 1000-4000mAh
(3-15Wh) - not very big.

But what it doesn't do is explode. There is pressure, but for an explosion
you need the pressure to be contained and then the containment to rupture
very rapidly. Most lithium cells in phones are just made of plastic
film so they aren't capable of withstanding pressure - they just swell up.
The phone is glued together and the pressure tears apart the glue.
The phone is destroyed but there's no explosive decompression.

(other lithium chemistries like LFP and LTO are even less active)

Consensus seems to be there were explosives added during manufacturing. The
explosive in a bullet releases energy much more quickly than a battery, and
a handful of bullets going off in your pocket could have this kind of
effect.

Theo

[GB]

Post by Theo
Consensus seems to be there were explosives added during manufacturing. The
explosive in a bullet releases energy much more quickly than a battery, and
a handful of bullets going off in your pocket could have this kind of
effect.

Thanks, all. That's what I thought, but it had been advanced as a
theory, so I just wanted to check.

It occurs to me the same approach could be used in other ways. As one
example, you could produce bullets with inappropriate propellant. If you
were being kind, you might make it so the bullet goes halfway up the
barrel and then stops - making it a job for an armourer to reactivate
the weapon.

If you were being unkind, you could replace the propellant with
explosive, so the breech explodes.

Post by Theo
Theo

[Andy Burns]

you could produce bullets with inappropriate propellant. If you were
being kind, you might make it so the bullet goes halfway up the barrel
and then stops - making it a job for an armourer to reactivate the weapon.

I don't think you've got into the evil warmongering mindset

If you were being unkind, you could replace the propellant with
explosive, so the breech explodes.

Getting there ...

[David]

Post by GB
Without getting at all political, there's been a suggestion that the
pagers in Lebanon exploded through malware causing them to overheat. Can
I just check whether the assembled sages think that's at all a plausible
explanation, please?

If this was technically possible the hacker community would have been
competing as to who could make the biggest and most high profile explosion
decades ago.

Would anyone old enough to have used a pager trusted middle managers with
that capability?

Cheers



Dave R

[Abandoned Trolley]

Post by GB
Without getting at all political, there's been a suggestion that the
pagers in Lebanon exploded through malware causing them to overheat. Can
I just check whether the assembled sages think that's at all a plausible
explanation, please?

Laughably implausible - for the simple reason that multiple devices
exploded at almost exactly the same time.

[Daniel James]

Post by GB
Without getting at all political, there's been a suggestion that the
pagers in Lebanon exploded through malware causing them to overheat. Can
I just check whether the assembled sages think that's at all a plausible
explanation, please?

As others have said: That's not how Lithium batteries fail.

The news today seems to be that someone (and fingers point at Israel,
but they haven't admitted it) has interfered with the
manufacturing/supply process and caused a small explosive charge and
detonator to be insinuated into the devices in question.

I doubt that could be done with a modern smartphone -- there's precious
little free space inside that could be used for such a thing.

[GB]

Post by Daniel James

Post by GB
Without getting at all political, there's been a suggestion that the
pagers in Lebanon exploded through malware causing them to overheat.
Can I just check whether the assembled sages think that's at all a
plausible explanation, please?

As others have said: That's not how Lithium batteries fail.
The news today seems to be that someone (and fingers point at Israel,
but they haven't admitted it) has interfered with the
manufacturing/supply process and caused a small explosive charge and
detonator to be insinuated into the devices in question.
I doubt that could be done with a modern smartphone -- there's precious
little free space inside that could be used for such a thing.

If you used a half size battery, would that free up enough space? Slow
the clock down so the phone doesn't run down the smaller battery too
quickly ...

[Richard Kettlewell]

Post by GB

As others have said: That's not how Lithium batteries fail. The news
today seems to be that someone (and fingers point at Israel, but they
haven't admitted it) has interfered with the manufacturing/supply
process and caused a small explosive charge and detonator to be
insinuated into the devices in question. I doubt that could be done
with a modern smartphone -- there's precious little free space inside
that could be used for such a thing.

If you used a half size battery, would that free up enough space? Slow
the clock down so the phone doesn't run down the smaller battery too
quickly ...

The NYT report claims the pager batteries were ‘laced with
explosive’. Perhaps the same could be applied to smartphones. But I
expect Hezbollah don’t use smartphones because they get hacked and then
they have a combined listening device and targetting assistant in their
pocket.

[Theo]

Post by Richard Kettlewell

Post by GB

As others have said: That's not how Lithium batteries fail. The news
today seems to be that someone (and fingers point at Israel, but they
haven't admitted it) has interfered with the manufacturing/supply
process and caused a small explosive charge and detonator to be
insinuated into the devices in question. I doubt that could be done
with a modern smartphone -- there's precious little free space inside
that could be used for such a thing.

If you used a half size battery, would that free up enough space? Slow
the clock down so the phone doesn't run down the smaller battery too
quickly ...

The NYT report claims the pager batteries were ‘laced with
explosive’.

I suspect that's one way to not get them to be noticed on X-rays (eg airport
scanners) - just make it look like a part of the battery assembly.

It seems likely that people flew with them, and would have blown the
operation if they had got stopped for having explosives. They must have
been sufficiently sealed so as not to be picked up by any sniffers
(electronic or canine).

Post by Richard Kettlewell
Perhaps the same could be applied to smartphones. But I
expect Hezbollah don’t use smartphones because they get hacked and then
they have a combined listening device and targetting assistant in their
pocket.

Even with dumbphones they're chatting to the tower and you can do traffic
analysis - who is going where. That tells you a lot even if you can't
listen to the communications.

Theo

[Andy Burns]

Post by GB
If you used a half size battery, would that free up enough space?

The pager in question doesn't even have a lithium rechargeable battery,
it just takes a AAA. 1/2 length AAA do exist, but the end-user might
notice if there was one of those plus a stick of C4?

[Woozy Song]

Post by Daniel James
I doubt that could be done with a modern smartphone -- there's precious
little free space inside that could be used for such a thing.

Even for the pager/walkie talkie, you would be needing a bespoke
detonator to fit in. Mining detonators are a minimum of 38 mm long, and
only a few mm at the end is actually explosive. Could perhaps make one
looking like an electolytic capacitor.

[Theo]

Post by Woozy Song

Post by Daniel James
I doubt that could be done with a modern smartphone -- there's precious
little free space inside that could be used for such a thing.

Even for the pager/walkie talkie, you would be needing a bespoke
detonator to fit in. Mining detonators are a minimum of 38 mm long, and
only a few mm at the end is actually explosive. Could perhaps make one
looking like an electolytic capacitor.

I don't know anything about high explosive, but it's not hard to
electronically make a small component very hot. Enough to ignite the
few grams of explosive charge?

I suspect mining detonators are carefully designed to not go off unless
something very specific happens to them, while shoving a lot of current into
a resistor controlled by software is not hard.

Theo