Israel informed the United States on Tuesday of the attack in which explosives hidden in pagers were detonated, the Associated Press (AP) quoted a US official as saying.

The AR-924 pagers used in Tuesday’s attack were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT in Budapest, Hungary, according to a statement by Taiwan’s Gold Apollo, which authorised the use of its brand name on the pagers.

BAC is suspected of being a shell company. No one has ever been seen at the BAC office in Budapest, Sputnik reported.

Gold Apollo chairman Hsu Ching-kuang told reporters on Wednesday that the company had a licensing agreement with BAC for the past three years.

The shell company registered in Hungary in May 2022

BAC Consulting, a limited liability company, was registered in May 2022, according to company records. The company has a share capital of €7,840 and generated revenues of $725,768 in 2022 and $593,972 in 2023, records show.

BAC is registered in the name of Cristiana Rosaria Bársony-Arcidiacono, who describes herself on her LinkedIn page as a strategic consultant and business developer.

Among other things, Bársony-Arcidiacono says on her page that she is on the board of the Earth Child Institute, a sustainability group. The group’s website does not list Bársony-Arcidiacono as a board member.

The battery life of the pager was the reason for its popularity in Lebanon

Experts believe the pagers were packed with explosives before delivery. According to the specifications advertised on Gold Apollo’s website before it was removed after the attack, the AR-924 pager, advertised as ‘rugged’, contains a rechargeable lithium battery.

The battery life was claimed to be up to 85 days. This is important in Lebanon, where power cuts are common after years of economic collapse.

The pagers also operate on a different radio network to mobile phones, making them more resilient in emergencies. This is one of the reasons why many hospitals around the world still rely on them.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said Gold Apollo had exported 260,000 sets of pagers from early 2022 to August 2024, including more than 40,000 sets between January and August this year.

The ministry said there was no record of any direct export of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon.

How was the attack planned?

According to Lebanese security sources quoted by AP, Israel planted explosives in 5,000 pagers months before the deadly blasts.

A senior Lebanese security source said the Israeli spy service had implanted thousands of pagers with explosives activated by encrypted messages during production, months before they were imported by Hezbollah.

Some experts told AP that the explosions were most likely the result of interference in the supply chain.

Very small explosives could have been placed in the pagers before they were delivered to the Lebanese and then detonated remotely, possibly by radio signal, all at the same time.

Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec, said that at the time of the attack ‘the battery was probably half explosive and half real’.

A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a trigger, a detonator and an explosive charge.

“A pager already has three of these,” said the former officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is currently advising clients in the Middle East. You just have to add the detonator and the explosive charge,” he said.

Magnier: The devices were delivered more than 6 months ago

Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based journalist with more than 37 years’ experience in the region, said he had interviewed Hezbollah members and survivors of Tuesday’s pager attack and that the pagers had been supplied more than six months ago.

The pagers worked perfectly for six months,” Magnier said, adding that what triggered the explosion appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices.

Magnier also said that based on his conversations with Hezbollah members, many pagers did not explode, allowing the group to inspect them.

Magnier said they concluded that a highly explosive substance of between 3 and 5 grams had been hidden or embedded in the circuitry.

Yesterday, radio pagers used by many Lebanese, including Hezbollah, were detonated in several Lebanese cities, killing dozens and injuring thousands.

The usual suspect, Israel, is believed to have tampered with these devices, which were delivered to Lebanon a few months ago, at some point in their manufacture and shipment, and planted small quantities of explosives which were activated yesterday by jamming the batteries with some kind of signal.

The intelligence operation organised by “interfering with the shipment” is reminiscent of how US intelligence infiltrates cargoes.

Cisco, which develops networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment and other high-tech services and products, responded to the US National Security Agency (NSA) in 2014 by condemning the US government’s interference with hardware the company was shipping to customers.

The NSA’s practice of intercepting packages containing hardware as they are delivered to customers, known as “interdiction”, was first revealed in classified documents published in December 2013 by Der Spiegel and journalist Jacob Appelbaum.

NSA opened boxes and planted tracking devices

Cisco made the announcement after a photograph emerged showing federal agents planting a tracking device on one of its routers.

The photos, published by journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, provided the first visual evidence of the NSA’s covert operation, in which agents seized and opened boxes, dismantled hardware, and planted tracking bugs and beacons for surveillance and sabotage.

One photograph showed four agents carefully removing packing tape from a Cisco-branded box containing computer hardware. The photograph also showed other Cisco-branded boxes stacked in a room that appeared to be part of a larger warehouse.

The agents were described as belonging to the ‘Special Access Operations’ (TAO) unit, the so-called ‘hacking arm’ of the NSA. The agents are tasked with ‘obtaining the unobtainable’ from targets the NSA deems worthy of surveillance.

Another leaked photograph shows how TAO agents obtain such material. The photo shows a ‘loading station’, in the same warehouse, where agents attach beacons and other spy gear to captured hardware before it is repackaged and shipped to the intended user.

The complicity of tech companies

According to the documents published by Greenwald, the NSA says that this interception was possible thanks to the “support of Intelligence Community partners”. In this case, Cisco may have been involved in the operation.

Indeed, shortly after the photos were published, Cisco executive Mark Chandler wrote that the company ‘complies with US regulations’ regarding the export of hardware to certain countries, but condemned the government’s alleged ‘steps to compromise IT products going to customers’.

We should be able to trust the government not to interfere with the lawful delivery of our products as we manufacture them. To do otherwise, and to violate the legitimate privacy rights of individuals and organisations around the world, would undermine confidence in our industry,’ Chandler wrote.

But Chandler stopped short of saying that Cisco was ‘completely in the dark’ about the NSA’s interception of its packets, and did not say whether Cisco was complicit in the interception of certain customers’ packets under secret programmes that the government says are legal.

The US military is preparing for the collapse of ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, amid fears it could spark a wider regional conflict.

I’m thinking about how that would affect tensions in the region if the talks were to stall or break down altogether, and what we need to do to be prepared in that situation,’ US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General CQ Brown told the Financial Times (FT) on Thursday.

Speaking en route to a meeting of the Ukraine Contact Group in Germany, Brown said he was assessing how regional actors would react if the talks failed and whether they would ‘step up their activities of any kind, potentially going down the path of miscalculation and widening the conflict’.

“My focus is on how not to expand the conflict, but also how to protect our forces,” the American general said.

Hostage deal still ‘not close’

Brown’s comments come as negotiations have reached an impasse. Israel and Hamas are at odds over details of the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, as well as Israel’s insistence on keeping troops in a strip of territory along Gaza’s border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that the United States would share with Israel and Hamas “in the coming days” its “thoughts on exactly how to resolve the remaining issues”. He added that ‘it’s up to the parties to decide yes or no’.

While the US has sought to remain optimistic about the talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly rejected claims of progress in the talks, telling Fox News on Thursday that a deal was ‘not imminent’.

Senior US officials say the talks are 90 per cent complete but acknowledge that difficult issues remain unresolved.

We’ve had setbacks, setbacks and more setbacks, and there’s no question that the administration is disappointed that we still haven’t completed this agreement,’ US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday.

A senior US official suggested that the deaths of six Israeli hostages held by Hamas last week ‘brought a sense of urgency to the [negotiating] process’ but also ‘raised questions about Hamas’ willingness to make a deal’.