Hezbollah Pager Attacks: An Urgent Lesson in Supply Chain Cybersecurity

By Shubham Agarwal, Contributing Writer, with Michael Caruso, Director, Supply Chain Risk Management at Access Point Consulting

This week's Cybersecurity Awareness Month article features insights from Michael Caruso, Access Point's Director of Supply Chain Risk Management, on the recent pager and two-way radio attacks targeting Hezbollah. Michael provides his perspective on these incidents, highlighting the importance of securing communication channels against such threats.

Earlier this year in February, the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah issued an urgent plea to its members. He asked them to bury their smartphones in an iron box and switch to low-tech communication devices ?such as walkie-talkies and pagers, fearing heightened Israeli surveillance in the wake of the Gaza war. Seven months later, several of these old-school devices abruptly exploded, killing dozens, including much of the Hezbollah’s leadership.?

Israel's intelligence had found a way into Hezbollah’s analog environment. Learning the group had plans to source a large batch of pagers and walkie-talkies, it reportedly infiltrated their manufacturing supply chains and shipped booby-trapped hardware through a series of shell companies. All it then took was a signal to trigger the explosions across the country.?

Hezbollah’s concerns over state-backed smartphone tracking weren’t unfounded, nor were the explosions that followed the first instance of supply chain warfare. In 2010, for example, a US-developed computer virus crippled an Iranian nuclear facility and two years later, the NSA tried to break into the Syrian internet via a bugged wireless router. Decades earlier, Israel itself brought down a notorious bomb maker with an explosive-infused cell phone.?

Supply chain attacks are, by no means, a new phenomenon. But as businesses and countries increasingly digitize their operations, Israel’s latest breach sheds an urgent spotlight on cyber threats that can emerge from supply chain vulnerabilities.?

Continue reading at www.accesspointconsulting.com/resources/hezbollah-pager-attacks-an-urgent-lesson-in-supply-chain-cybersecurity