What is known about the explosions in Lebanon and how was the manipulation of the search engines possible?

A unprecedented mass attack and an unprecedented technological sophistication has left at least eight dead and 2,800 wounded in Lebanon when hundreds of electronic pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded in a coordinated manner. Israel apparently manipulated the devices to detonate them.

Here’s what’s known so far about what happened:

When and where did the explosions occur?

The blasts began around 3:30 p.m. local time (4:30 p.m. in the Basque Country) in Lebanon, in the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahiyeh and in the eastern Bekaa Valley, all of which are Hezbollah strongholds. They lasted for about an hour. According to recordings of the explosions, some of the blasts occurred after the beepers had gone off, causing the person carrying the beeper to put their hands on it or raise it to their face to check the display.

WHAT SIZE WERE THE EXPLOSIONS?

The explosions were relatively limited. In two videos recorded in supermarkets, the explosions appear to injure only the person wearing the device or the person closest to him. Images shared on social media appear to show people with injuries of varying degrees to the face, fingers and hip, where the pager was probably worn. The explosions did not appear to cause major damage or start a fire.

WHICH DEVICES EXPLODE?

Images of the destroyed devices analyzed by Reuters show a size and stickers consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo, a manufacturer based in Taiwan.

Hezbollah had begun using pagers as a low-tech means of preventing Israel from tracking its location. Three security sources cited by Reuters said the pagers that were detonated were the latest model obtained in recent months.

WHAT CAUSED THE PEEPER EXPLOSION?

It’s the million-dollar question. Some diplomatic and security sources cited by Reuters speculate that the explosions could have been caused by the devices’ batteries exploding, possibly due to overheating.

Experts have been baffled by the explosions, but others who spoke to Reuters said they doubted the battery alone would have been enough to cause the explosions. Paul Christensen, a lithium-ion battery safety expert at Newcastle University, explained that the extent of the damage caused by the pager explosions seemed inconsistent with known cases of similar battery failures in the past.

“What we’re talking about is a relatively small battery that catches fire. We’re not talking about a fatal explosion. I would need to know more about the energy density of batteries, but my intuition tells me that’s very unlikely,” he said.

SMEX, a Lebanese digital rights organization, told the same agency that Israel could have exploited a weakness in the device to blow it up. He specifically pointed out that the pagers could also have been intercepted before they reached Hezbollah and that they could have been electronically manipulated or implanted with an explosive device. Israeli intelligence agencies have previously planted explosives on personal phones to attack their enemies, Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, a weapons and security specialist, wrote in his book Rise up and kill first. Hackers have also demonstrated the ability to inject malicious code into personal devices, in some cases causing them to overheat and explode.