Exploding pagers

It was probably detonated by some special message, and wouldn't have worked on a plane.

There are high explosives that can be set off by a feather and others that wouldn't go even when dropped down from a plane.

Jeroen Belleman

Planes are Faraday cages. These days they do use WiFi inside the aircraft to give people access to the Web, but pagers rely on older technology.

Rubbish. The Jewish migration into Israel started much earlier than that. One of my Jewish acquaintances (now dead) spent time in a kibutz in Palestine before WW2, though he spent most of WW2 in the UK.

Iran is a much bigger pain in the arse than any of the rest.

An Iran-dominated middle east won't be peaceful.

Americans have never cared much about the rest of the world, except as tourist destinations.

It's more that the US Jewish lobby is remarkably influential - not so much because they are all that powerful as because they actually care what happens to Israel.

Too true. Of course Trump really is callous and uncaring - he's an egomaniac, and only cares about himself - and taxes will rise under Harris because Trump cut taxes when he was in power in a thoroughly irresponsible way, and that will have to be undone.

Not really. They have windows. The doors are not electrically connected to the fuselage all the way round so they act as slot antennas. Mobile phones work fine inside planes.

John

They aren't restricted to just a single type of explosive. There are detonators that can be set off by a very small increase in temperature and a few microgrammes of those would set off a bigger charge of something more powerful.

Other interesting information in the book "Winston Churchill's Toyshop" and that was the technology of 80 years ago.

When I fly, I choose a window seat, hold my phone to the window and use the sat-nav app (Magic Earth). It sometimes takes a while to get a fix, but it always works. If I'm over a country where I've downloaded the maps, I get a lot of speed warnings.

However, I doubt the cellphone network would work.

At low altitude cellphones would work. However, the network operators don't like it because a planeload of cellphones would be visible to a large number of base stations and cause interference to other calls on the same frequency over a wide area.

John

It is interesting how, shortly after the incident, the meadia was full of statements from "experts" claiming that the most likely source of the explosions were the batteries.

These experts would explain that, if shorted, a lithium battery can explode. They made no attempt at explaining, or even speculating, how this short would have implemented. Nor did they explain the such an explosion is extremely unlikely, since battery manufacturers go out of their way to make their products as safe as possible.

There were videos of one or two explosions published. The videos clearly show explosions that are nothing like a battery explosion. The explosions are hard and sharp, consistent with a high-velocity explosive.

More interestingly, no journalist posed any question whatsoever. They are not interested in the truth. They are only interested in a story.

But it appears that they exploded simultaneously or nearly so. Hard to achieve that synchronicity by heating. I rather think they sent some type of code, maybe a string.

Methinks that now the factories are a legitimate target for the "receiving side", unless they can convincingly prove that they are totally innocent.

I wonder if the entire batch was deployed, whether there are intact pagers in storage that they can investigate.

Indeed. Anyone can see that zero commercial aircraft are RF-tight. Only a simpleton would assume that because occupants are unharmed by lightning strikes it means no EM can leak in. Also bear in mind VHF/UHF comms are line of sight and planes are exposed to EM from anywhere on the ground they're visible from, even if it's only half a Watt - the typical output of a hand-held walkie-talkie.

Well, maybe. But no one has yet *named* a practical explosive such as could be used in a pager which explodes when heated. I would like a specific named substance I can verify does that, because I simply cannot think of one and am consequently questioning whether one actually exists.

Yes, I know. But *name one* which could be used in a pager that explodes from raising its temperature.

The bovine masses simply accept what they're told for the most part. They seem incapable of critical thinking. We all know here on this group at least that lithium battery explosions are accompanied by fireballs. They make great incendiaries no doubt, but as you say, the clips we've seen of pagers going off appear to be nothing like lithium would give rise to.

Um…. This is an electronics design group. Is it really that hard to imagine how to make a temperature-triggered detonator?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

That's (apparently) what was done. But these were put in the battery, so that a supply-chain attack wouldn't involve complex modification of the devices in transit. Instead, just replace the batteries -- the device appears normal to visual exam, and functionality (other than battery life) is unchanged.

Some reports said that the pagers beeped continuously for some time before detonating, which supports the "heating the battery" theory. A single page would only create a small amount of heat, which could dissipate over several minutes. But repeated activations would allow the heat to build up.

The heat doesn't necessarily set off the warhead directly; rather it could trigger a thermal sensor to activate a small detonator cap to set off the main charge. There's a battery right there to power all this.

It's also possible they found a zero-day in the firmware that allowed them to send a crafted message which accessed the BMS signal path, then sent a command to a custom BMS IC.

Easier isn't always better in spycraft.

I don't think it worked like that anyway. If the perpetrators could subvert the battery packs, I don't see why they could not also subvert the battery management system to trigger a built-in detonator. The explosive charge was tiny, from what I gather, maybe even just a detonator and nothing more. Enough to blow a hole, but too little to shatter the whole pager.

Off hand, I can think of two or three explosives that would do the job, but I'll refrain from naming them. Sorry.

Jeroen Belleman

Reports suggest that some of the pagers didn't detonate, so can be analyzed.

It would be interesting to see what they did.

And have Journalism degrees.