Exploding Pager Mystery Deepens as Taiwan Firm Diverts Blame
(Bloomberg) -- Taiwan’s Gold Apollo Co., whose brand appears on pagers that exploded in Lebanon, said a company based in Hungary is responsible for manufacturing the models used in the attacks, adding to the mystery around a strike that is escalating tensions in the Middle East.
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Gold Apollo said it has had an agreement with BAC Consulting in Budapest for several years under which the Hungarian company can use its brand in designated regions.
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“Regarding the recent media reports about the AR-924 pager, we clarify that this model is produced and sold by BAC,” the company said in a statement. “We only provide brand trademark authorization and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product.”
BAC didn’t immediately respond to emails and phone calls for comment.
“There is no problem with pagers exported from Taiwan exploding,” Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement in response to media inquiries, adding that the case is is currently under investigation.
On Tuesday, thousands of pagers exploded across Lebanon, killing at least nine people and wounding almost 3,000. The militant group Hezbollah accused the Israeli government of orchestrating the attack, raising fears of an all-out war after near-daily skirmishes for much of the last year. Israel declined to comment.
One of the outstanding questions is how the blasts were planned and then triggered with such coordination. Small amounts of explosive were planted in beepers that Hezbollah had ordered, the New York Times reported, citing US and other officials briefed on the operation.
Just one or two ounces of the material was added next to the battery of each pager, and a switch was embedded to trigger the detonation, the newspaper reported. Devices exploded simultaneously around the country at about 3:30 p.m.
Gold Apollo is low profile even within Taiwan’s tech community, with only about 40 employees. Its headquarters were besieged by media on Wednesday, punctuated by visits from the police.
Founder Hsu Ching-Kuang told reporters gathered there that his company hadn’t made the devices. He said Gold Apollo began working with BAC about three years ago. The company had said it was interested in tapping its engineers to produce its own pagers, using Gold Apollo’s brand name. Hsu never met BAC’s chief in person, instead speaking over video calls.
The Taiwanese company began operations in 1995 and sells alphanumeric pagers as well as the kind of beepers that alert customers in restaurants that their order is ready.
Hezbollah operatives use low-tech devices such as pagers and walkie-talkies to avoid interceptions of their communications by Israeli intelligence. They can send encrypted messages without giving away their location.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement that the pagers were likely modified since the battery used in them has only the capacity of an AA battery. “There is no possibility of death or injury caused by an explosion,” it said.
It’s not clear where or when the explosives were added to the devices. Lebanon’s government also described the events as an Israel attack.
With no official explanations, theories began to circulate about how devices considered long outmoded could have been turned into such lethal weapons.
One cybersecurity expert, Robert Graham, said on X that “making batteries do anything more than burn is very hard and implausible. Far more plausible is that somebody bribed the factory to insert the explosives.”
Deepa Kundur, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, said she suspects it was a “supply chain deployment.” In such an attack, she said, the perpetrator would infiltrate the pager’s upstream supply chain to manufacture a critical component with a built-in explosive charge, without the final vendor knowing. The explosive component could sit in a pager for months or years before being detonated on receipt of a message that triggers the modified part.
Pagers have been supplanted by mobile phones in much of the world, although NPR recently reported that doctors in US hospitals continue to favor their no-nonsense messaging. Pagers are also routinely used in medical facilities in Lebanon.
--With assistance from Jamie Tarabay, Bill Faries, Cindy Wang, Foster Wong and Cecile Vannucci.
(Updates with Taiwan foreign ministry’s response in fifth paragraph)
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