Category: terrorism

Wow.

It seems they all exploded simultaneously, which means they were triggered.

Were they each tampered with physically, or did someone figure out how to trigger a thermal runaway remotely? Supply chain attack? Malicious code update, or natural vulnerability?

I have no idea, but I expect we will all learn over the next few days.

EDITED TO ADD: I’m reading nine killed and 2,800 injured. That’s a lot of collateral damage. (I haven’t seen a good number as to the number of pagers yet.)

EDITED TO ADD: Reuters writes: “The pagers that detonated were the latest model brought in by Hezbollah in recent months, three security sources said.” That implies supply chain attack. And it seems to be a large detonation for an overloaded battery.

This reminds me of the 1996 assassination of Yahya Ayyash using a booby trapped cellphone.

EDITED TO ADD: I am deleting political comments. On this blog, let’s stick to the tech and the security ramifications of the threat.

EDITED TO ADD (9/18): More explosions today, this time radios. Good New York Times explainer. And a Wall Street Journal article. Clearly a physical supply chain attack.

EDITED TO ADD (9/18): Four more good articles.

In case you don’t have enough to worry about, people are hiding explosives—actual ones—in USB sticks:

In the port city of Guayaquil, journalist Lenin Artieda of the Ecuavisa private TV station received an envelope containing a pen drive which exploded when he inserted it into a computer, his employer said.

Artieda sustained slight injuries to one hand and his face, said police official Xavier Chango. No one else was hurt.

Chango said the USB drive sent to Artieda could have been loaded with RDX, a military-type explosive.

More:

According to police official Xavier Chango, the flash drive that went off had a 5-volt explosive charge and is thought to have used RDX. Also known as T4, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (PDF), militaries, including the US’s, use RDX, which “can be used alone as a base charge for detonators or mixed with other explosives, such as TNT.” Chango said it comes in capsules measuring about 1 cm, but only half of it was activated in the drive that Artieda plugged in, which likely saved him some harm.

Reminds me of assassination by cell phone.

Today is the second day of the fifteenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior, hosted by Ross Anderson and Alice Hutchings at the University of Cambridge. After two years of having this conference remotely on Zoom, it’s nice to be back together in person.

SHB is a small, annual, invitational workshop of people studying various aspects of the human side of security, organized each year by Alessandro Acquisti, Ross Anderson, Alice Hutchings, and myself. The forty or so attendees include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, sociologists, political scientists, criminologists, neuroscientists, designers, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, geographers, business school professors, and a smattering of others. It’s not just an interdisciplinary event; most of the people here are individually interdisciplinary.

For the past decade and a half, this workshop has been the most intellectually stimulating two days of my professional year. It influences my thinking in different and sometimes surprising ways—and has resulted in some unexpected collaborations.

Our goal is always to maximize discussion and interaction. We do that by putting everyone on panels, and limiting talks to six to eight minutes, with the rest of the time for open discussion. Because everyone was not able to attend in person, our panels all include remote participants as well. The hybrid structure is working well, even though our remote participants aren’t around for the social program.

This year’s schedule is here. This page lists the participants and includes links to some of their work. As he does every year, Ross Anderson is liveblogging the talks.

Here are my posts on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth SHB workshops. Follow those links to find summaries, papers, and occasionally audio/video recordings of the various workshops. Ross also maintains a good webpage of psychology and security resources.