Now Cyber Kinetic Warfare

The coordinated pager attacks that struck the Hezbollah raise the spectre of cyber kinetic warfare, which combines communication technologies with physical destruction. India faces a heightened risk as most of its connected devices depend on Chinese and foreign components

- NILANJAN DAS/AI

On September 17, around 3.30 pm Beirut time, thousands of pagers used by members of the Hezbollah, the Shia militant group, started exploding across Lebanon. The explosions killed 11 and injured 2,700. The next day, it was the turn of walkie talkies they used to blow up, killing over 20 and injuring 450 people. The mass electronic sabotage, presumed to have been orchestrated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) along with the country's spy agency, Mossad, represents a new chapter in electronic warfare. The pager/ walkie talkie attacks raise the spectre worldwide of the potential widespread weaponisation and targeting of personal gadgets. Though putting explosives in phones and detonating them is an old art in the secret agent's toolbox, what makes the alleged Israeli attack unique is the deep supply chain interdiction of a large cache of devices and the planting and detonating of explosives in so many of them at once. Meanwhile, the latest instalment of Israeli action against Hezbollah is being pursued through more conventional means and has taken on a dangerous dimension with the killing of Hezbollah's chief, Hasan Nasrallah, in an Israeli airstrike on September 27. In response to Nasrallah's death and the Israeli army's ground offensive against Hezbollah into Lebanon itself, Iran, Israel's main adversary in the region, launched around 200 ballistic missiles into Israel on October 1. Aimed at air bases and military installations, most were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome air defence system.

AVIATION

Fly-by-wire flight control systems and in-flight Wi-Fi can be compromised by malware and can trigger failure/ explosions