Modern Cyber Warfare Takes a Deadly Turn as Pagers in Lebanon and Syria Blow up Killing and Harming Thousands of People

September 17, 2024 may go down as one of the most infamous days in history, as an unprecedented cyberattack was carried out against people in Lebanon and Syria earlier today, by simultaneously detonating thousands of pagers that blew up remotely killing several people, and injuring thousands. Most of the victims targeted were members of Hezbollah, but many innocent people were also attacked. At the time of this writing, there are two main theories about how Israel was able to pull off this historic attack. One theory is that there was a cybersecurity breach, causing the pagers’ lithium batteries to overheat and detonate. Another is that this was a “supply chain attack,” where the pagers were tampered with during the manufacturing and shipping process. While the most likely explanation of how this happened is that these pagers were altered before people started using them, and that it is not possible to remotely hack existing mobile devices and just blow them up, that doesn't mean that this event today is unlikely to happen again, or that this could not happen in the United States. First of all, lithium ion batteries are notorious for blowing up and burning. This has been happening accidentally for at least 20 years now.