Could all of our phones be blown up by a cyberattack?

“How could Israel have triggered Hezbollah pager explosions?” (Daily Mail):

… the cause of the explosions was likely the lithium batteries that power the pagers.

While lithium-ion batteries are commonly used in consumer electronics, they can overheat and catch on fire – even exploding violently in some cases.

This is due to a phenomenon called thermal runaway, a chemical chain reaction which occurs when the battery experiences a rapid temperature change.

As this chemical reaction progresses it can lead to a sudden release of energy which can cause devices to explode with intense force and heat.

Thermal runaway is triggered when the battery is overheated, punctured or overcharged.

Question for today: If we believe the media reports implying that these were standard pagers to begin with (i.e., not supplied to the noble Hezbollah members with added explosives by an enemy pretending to be a legitimate pager supplier), what stops a malicious person from breaking into iOS, Android, or a popular app and perpetrating a similar attack on smartphones? The attack could be targeted as well. For example, a “Save Our Democracy” program, inspired by the statements of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, could wait for a few weeks to try to figure out the “threat to democracy” level of the phone owner. Just before Election Day, then, the phones of anyone who has clicked “like” on a tweet from Donald Trump or the Babylon Bee would explode.

People have been buying cases to save their smartphones from external threats, such as impact. What if the threat is the phone itself and the case should protect us from the phone?

23 thoughts on “Could all of our phones be blown up by a cyberattack?

  1. Why would anyone believe the media reports? Can the battery in a pager explode as seen in the videos? Why aren’t Teslas exploding instead of needing an ocean of water to put them out when ablaze? It seems more likely that Mossad was able to put explosives in pagers. Though then how would it have known that the pagers would end up with the right targets? Maybe there are a lot more people with the explosive pagers which weren’t detonated.

    • Mitch: You’re thinking that the Lebanese, including noble Hezbollah resistance members, went to “Crazy Bibi’s” to shop for pagers?

  2. Per quotes elsewhere SkyNews in Arabic reported that the pagers were set-up with 20 grams of explosives. No iPhones were hurt in the process.

    • perplexed: We are informed that Palestinians and friends are among the world’s most intelligent people and that if we want to be prosperous we should welcome as many as possible as immigrants. How did the world’s smartest people acquire and use thousands of pagers that had been packed with explosives and never notice?

    • Said who? Official average IQ surveys for Middle East (and Iran) are quite damning. I think that consequences of it are readily observable. I am not saying that we perform stellarly on IQ, especially current White House. position

    • How did the world’s smartest people acquire and use thousands of pagers that had been packed with explosives and never notice? Lebanese, including noble Hezbollah resistance members, went to “Crazy Bibi’s” to shop for pagers.

  3. Under the democratic regime of dear leader Kamala Harris, only misinformation and disinformation spreaders need to fear their phones. All phone conversations will be monitored by an AI for unapproved or possibly offensive speech, and offenders will quickly dispatched.
    /s

  4. Android phones typically only last a year so it would be hard to correlate voting history with phone longevity. Could imagine god smitting the phones of Trump voters. Guess we’ll find out how jewish Greenspun really is if the DSLR makes a comeback.

  5. Dear Peace-loving Hezbollah members,

    Joe and I extend our deepest sympathies to you all (and Hunter does too). As you know, we have never liked the evil Israeli regime or most of the people there. To us they are just like our own home grown hitler Donald Trump. All about genocide. Keep up the good fight and remember that God is Great!

    With dearest regards,
    Dr. Jill (and affectionately “sleepy” Joe).

  6. “God paged me, “You’ll never see the light”, who wants to see?”
    — the ever insightful Korn.

    Video below for your cultural enrichment.

  7. Mossad/Israel should not have used modified pagers to do the killing. By doing so, the whole world now knows what they are capable of. And I’m not just talking about implanting an explosive device in a pager, I’m talking about the logistics of getting those pagers to their intended targets.

    In my opinion, it would have been much better to keep this top-secrete and use it for some other goals, such as tracking or eavesdropping. With tracking you can send a missile to the target, with eavesdropping, you can listen-in on your target — i.e.: use conventional weapons to do the killing vs. cleaver technology and logistics.

    • The confidence and self-assuredness of the thousands of internet denizens and NY Times “analysts” who haven’t hesitated to opine on the shortcomings of this operation is truly impressive.

      Maybe the guys who planned this genius operation have given its implications a little more thought than you did in the two minutes since you learned of it. For example, by watching the hospitals in person and from the sky, they will know where thousands of terrorists live and with whom they associate.

  8. I guess the Lebanese TSA totally sucks at their jobs (or the hundreds of Hezbollah guys are all on no-fly lists everywhere and therefore don’t fly commercial enough for their modified electronic devices to be noticed)

    • Interesting question: Was the original shipment legitimate but intercepted and replaced at some point in transit? Or did they really order from Crazy Bibi’s Beeper Shack?

    • SuperMike: there is no room for dogs in the Religion of PeaceⓇ. Some countries (Malaysia?) employ non-Muslims specifically to handle police dogs, but I don’t know if Hezbollah has a Foreign Legion.

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