Here’s How Cyberattacks Can Wreak Havoc in the Real World

How is it possible to detonate thousands of pagers at the same time? The first hypotheses about what happened in Lebanon point, according to the The Wall Street Journalto a new batch of these devices recently delivered to Hezbollah commanders. These could have been manipulated to explode upon receipt of a specific message“Some people felt the pagers getting hot and threw them away before they exploded,” the American newspaper reported, citing eyewitnesses.

He lithium battery overheating can lead to its explosion. However, the pagers have tiny batteries that, on their own, should not be capable of causing serious injury, amputations or death. There are growing reports that Israeli intelligence discovered that Hezbollah was going to buy a batch of encrypted pagers, broke into their factory and planted explosives.

Edward Snowden, the former CIA and NSA spy welcomed by Russia after starring in one of the biggest leaks in history, points to possible sabotage in X. “Seems more likely to be implanted with explosives and not a hack. Because? Too many serious and constant injuries. “If these were overheated batteries that exploded, you would typically see a lot more small fires and misfires.”

The case is reminiscent of that of Yehie Ayash, known as The Engineer, head of the military branch of Hamas and a bomb expert, assassinated by Israel in 1996. The method used at the time by the Israeli secret services was to send him through a friend. a cell phone trapIt contained 50 grams of remotely detonated explosives capable of causing immediate death.

Chaos with cyber attacks

Cyberspace is a virtual place, a succession of ones and zeros with no apparent influence on physical reality. But in a hyperconnected world like ours, any vulnerability can be exploited for something much more dangerous rather than causing economic losses or stealing data.

The most important actors in this dark area are the state or belong to groups mercenaries hired by countries like Russia, China or Iran. However, cyberwar knows no borders or ethical restrictions and countries like the United States or Israel are also particularly active in these fights.

For example, Spain has been suffering cyberattacks since the beginning of the war between Ukraine and Russia aimed at “influencing or changing opinions” due to its alignment with NATO countries. However, far from the classic hacks with economic motivations or the disinformation that circulates on the Internet, Current threats better fit the term cyberterrorism and they aim to sow chaos among the population.

One of the best examples of cyberterrorism is the hacking of the Ukrainian population, which saw how its largest internet service provider has been withdrawn from Russialeaving a large part of the country offline. Another page in the long history of attacks that respond to this motivation and whose perpetrators are cybercrime groups linked to the GRU or, in other words, to the Intelligence Service of the Russian Armed Forces.

Hospitals, water or energy

Over the past decade, even those seeking economic advantage have wreaked havoc on key sectors of society. There have been major hacks in the food industry, such as the one at JBS or the one suffered by the KPSnacks company in the UK earlier this year, preventing food from being distributed to people in many countries. Others, such as the NotPetya virus, targeted Ukraine and spread around the world. forcing the UK’s National Health Service to cancel thousands of medical appointments.

In 2015, the Ukrainian power grid was disrupted by Black Energy leaving 80,000 homes in the west of the country without electricity for six hours. Less destructive was the attack on the power grid detected in the United States and Europe in 2017, with Dragonfly 2.0 allowing attackers to collect data and access power systems. Fortunately, the group was more interested in using this power to negotiate than to cause power supply problems.

In 2016, the Islamic State, Daesh, targeted a city’s water treatment plant in England with the aim of modifying the levels of chemicals used to treat the water consumed by the thousands of inhabitants of the area.

Thanks to the actions of the plant’s managers, the system failure was resolved before it caused a humanitarian catastrophe. In Spain, intelligence services also had evidence of jihadist groups planning on the Internet. how to introduce poisons into the country’s water channels and reservoirsThese are not isolated cases: in 2020 in Israel and in 2021 in Florida (USA), an increase in the level of chemicals was detected in two water treatment plants, but the attacks were discovered in time.

In March, Jake Sullivan, assistant to the president for national security affairs, and Michael S. Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, issued a letter to U.S. governors saying that companies responsible for providing drinking water and wastewater across the country were suffering. “disable cyber attacks”.

The letter, from the administration of President Biden, said the attacks “have the potential to disrupt vital support for clean, safe drinking water” and They directly blame hackers from hostile foreign countrieswith Iran and China as the main culprits.

Others critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants They have very high levels of security, but they are not completely safe from danger either. “Normally, these types of facilities have physical security protections, but the truth is that there is a history of total failures,” Carlos Manchado, head of cybersecurity at Microsoft in Spain, told EL ESPAÑOL-Omicrono at the time. “That’s because there could be a logical attack that would cause physical damage to critical infrastructure and that could affect national security.”

Even pacemakers

The attack in Lebanon, which has so far been attributed to Israeli intelligence without official confirmation, was not directed against an infrastructure, but against a specific group of people, members of Hezbollah. Everything points to sabotage, rather than hacking, but also affected third parties who were nearby and they had nothing to do with the members of the armed group.

There is the possibility of highly targeted cyberattacks that affect the devices we use every day, a vector very vulnerable to attacks with physical consequencesBeyond cell phones and sophisticated software tools like Pegasus, many point to medical devices such as pacemakers or insulin pumps as the most delicate.

At present, no deaths related to this type of attack are known, but Several studies highlight the vulnerability of pacemakers to malicious agents. Cyberattacks can cause these devices to behave in unexpected ways and cause serious harm to those who have them implanted. For example, medical implants can become murder weapons by altering their operation through remote access.

Although security has improved on many of these devices, it is worth remembering that in 2017 The US FDA has ordered the withdrawal of nearly 500,000 pacemakers from the market.Technicians at the agency that oversees and approves medical devices in the United States have said hackers could take advantage of the flaws to reprogram them and abruptly drain their batteries, or even alter a patient’s heart rate, putting their life in danger.