I am very curious to learn exactly how one reprograms pagers to become bombs.
@mcfate They had to have modified the devices between factory and delivery.
See, that's what I'm wondering.
It seems to me that it MIGHT be possible to make something go nuts with spoofed carrier configuration messages, if the pagers are badly-designed enough.
Fed enough over-voltage for long enough, a Lion battery is a (smallish) explosive device.
@mcfate @FreedomATX Seems to me hacking the pager's logic to recognize certain caller ID patterns would be enough.
As for the explosive, it sounds like something more powerful than a Li-ion battery:
The images seen Tuesday showed signs of detonation, said Alex Plitsas, a weapons expert at the Atlantic Council. “A lithium ion battery fire is one thing, but I’ve never seen one explode like that. It looks like a small explosive charge."
Maybe use the battery as a detonator?
I'm stuck between the two possibilities. Being able to reliably detonate the batteries is a pretty tall ask, unless the pagers were particularly susceptible. A far more typical failure mode is to cause severe burns, but not an actual detonation.
Occam's razor... Thermal runaway is the more likely answer, but does require a confluence of multiple layers of bad design and impressive hacking.
Both of which strike me as entirely possible here.
@mcfate @ImagineThat There's a third possibility: They had no idea it would be this effective and just wanted to set them on fire by causing thermal runaway.
@ImagineThat @FreedomATX
You're assuming physical access to the pagers, several thousand of 'em, and I'm — so far — not willing to go that far.