Israel has an intelligence agency that's generally recognized to be quite competent. I'm sure it would have taken them approximately 5 minutes to learn from their many spies that a new form of communications is being used.
They just didn't realize how real this particular plan was. It's quite likely Hamas is regularly bluffing similar attacks in many potentially-compromised channels. If they then see Israel react, they've received info about Israel's capabilities & tactics – and maybe even ways to misdirect Israeli forces with future feints. And any real plans may stay hidden amongst dozens/hundreds of other "false alarms".
Yes, but I believe the post to which I was replying used "the initial attack" that Israel "failed to see coming" to refer to Hamas' October 7th attack.
Hence my reference to Hamas' likely chaffing of Israel's intel, and Israel's false-alarm fatigue, before that "surprise" attack.
Of course Hezbollah likely uses similar tactics - but if as deeply pierced as this latest attack implies, they'd have to wonder if any comm successes they thought they had were just Israel leading them on. I doubt Hezbollah has surprised Israel recently!
The IRGC itself has clearly and spectacularly infiltrated; read the details of the Haniyeh attack. So, yeah, at this point I don't think anyone in the IRGC network can trust anybody else. The messaging here is pretty intense.
Theoretically, pagers are simpler devices, meaning it would be much easier in principle to analyse both hardware and software to check for issues, unlike a mainstream phone OS which has a bigger software attack area and can have at least some zero day attacks known to a state level actor like Israel.
Although, if it really was explosive inside the pagers it seems Hezbollah didn't do this.
I mean Israel is behind Pegasus, so it's not exactly a secret that they can get into any cellphone. Israel didn't need to infiltrate Hezbollah, they just needed publicity.
Exactly.
But this buyer is not a regular buyer, he is not getting a tracking number and refreshing some random website to see where it's shipment is.
The buyer must have been with the goods from a point before it reached its destinated country.
There are so many plays that had to play here in order to orcestrate this.
Should make a really good heist movie, just with a different prize at the end.
You find where the pagers are coming from. They probably had a supply chain going to cycle through pagers. 2,700 pagers being replaced regularly is an easy target.
