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.
