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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29604 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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Will this lead to any kind of generalized panic about mobile phones and other electronic devices? There are already rumors spreading that there were no explosives in the pagers and that this is something potentially any mobile device could be made to do if hacked.

These obviously had explosives physically implanted in them. If someone is reporting there were no explosives, they are either 1) an Israeli operative trying to propagandize to make Israelis seem more powerful than they are or 2) someone who can't identify explosives, or someone looking at pagers that weren't modified.

The real risk for supply chain attacks is spy software and backdoors: information is power. And yeah, any country where all its electronics are made or handled by a hostile foreign adversary should be worried.

The problem is two-fold:

  1. Even if there were explosives in the beepers, the rumor is already out there.
  2. Having to worry that someone put C4 in your cellphone at some point in the supply chain is pretty bad too.

I had the same thought, although from the looks of things there were absolutely explosives planted in these pagers; batteries don't just explode like that.

Yeah, I've intentionally (and, uh, unintentionally) lit off some pretty high-capacity lipo batteries; even with direct punctures crossing multiple cells (don't do this!) it won't light off anywhere like these. Really big ones, scooter- or car-sized, can push out enough energy that people trying to put them out can inadvertently produce hydrogen gas that can detonate, but they're not fitting in a pager and you need a ton of water.

LiPo fires are scary because they burn so damn hot and so damn fast.

Yep, lithium-ion batteries will burn like a rocket and produce copious amounts of smoke, but no boom, or even pop.

Anyone who’s watched Mythbusters knows that high-explosives look very different from overpressure failures.

This looks like high-explosives to me.

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