Ex-top cyber official: It won’t be easy for Hezbollah to get new comms system in place
Refael Franco, former deputy director general of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, says ‘bold, unusual’ action like the detonating of the pagers is ‘how you get deterrence’
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
There has never been a targeted killing operation comparable to the pager attack in Lebanon earlier this week, a former senior Israeli cyber defense official told The Times of Israel.
“It was precise while widespread,” said Refael Franco, former Deputy General Director of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate and head of its defensive measures, referring to the coordinated attack on Hezbollah pagers across Lebanon on Tuesday, in which at least 12 people were killed and 2,800 wounded.
Israel is widely believed to have been behind the attack, but has not taken responsibility. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday acknowledged the “unprecedented” strike on his forces, blamed Israel and vowed vengeance.
Franco declined to comment when asked whether Israel was responsible.
“Several months ago, Hezbollah decided to equip itself with pagers,” he said.
“That decision is, in my eyes, the real turning point… Nasrallah understood that he couldn’t use cellphones anymore,” said Franco cryptically.
In a televised speech in February, Nasrallah denounced the use of cellphones due to concerns they could be tracked by Israel and warned: “You ask me where the agent is. I tell you that the phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the agent.”
According to The New York Times, Israel invested millions in developing new technologies to hack into phones, and Hezbollah allies warned Nasrallah of the danger. Nasrallah banned cellphones from Hezbollah meetings, said the report, ordered fighters to carry pagers, and decided that orders would be given through the pagers at times of conflict.
The next step, said Franco, is understanding “the entire Hezbollah supply chain – purchasing, distribution, budget.”
“It could be that they bought the pagers from an Israeli shell company,” he speculated, referring to foreign reports, including in The New York Times.
Up to three grams of explosives hidden in the pagers had gone undetected for months by Hezbollah, Reuters reported earlier this week.
The news agency also reported, citing a Lebanese source, that the batteries of walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah that blew up the day after the pagers were laced with a highly explosive compound known as PETN. The way the explosive material was integrated into the battery pack made it extremely difficult to detect, the source told Reuters.
Citing three intelligence officials briefed on the operation, The New York Times said that Israel set up a front operation in Hungary called BAC Consulting, which produced the pagers for Hezbollah, and began shipping them in the summer of 2022. The shipments reportedly increased dramatically this year.
Franco, currently CEO of Code Blue Cyber, left the National Cyber Directorate in 2021, after receiving the Israel Security Award for leading a special operation, he said.
Franco claimed the attackers were able to achieve “zero-day” vulnerability on the Hezbollah devices, meaning the user is unaware of what has been done to a device and has no time to react before an attack is activated. “By learning the device extremely well, you can interfere with its software or hardware without the user knowing,” Franco said.
France noted that the attacks reportedly put hundreds of Hezbollah fighters out of action.
And he argued that the harm to Hezbollah’s command and control was the most important effect of the attack. “Controlling thousands of fighters and units when they don’t have a way to communicate, that is something that sets them back many years.”
In the short term, Hezbollah will have to use runners or cellphones to communicate, Franco assessed. Even if Iran were to send Hezbollah advanced communications equipment, it would take weeks, if not months, for a new system to be operational.
“It will take weeks to learn the system,” said Franco, “and get used to using it and to trust it. And their confidence in their communications systems is very low.”
Crucially, he claimed, the two days of exploding devices would likely enhance Israel’s deterrence against Hezbollah, which was deeply damaged by Hamas’s invasion and slaughter in southern Israel on October 7.
Aerial strikes, though they have a range of beneficial effects for Israel, only go so far to restore deterrence. Hezbollah has weathered Israeli airstrikes for decades, and designed its military force with the expectation that it would have to withstand weeks of bombing. “Bold, unusual [action], that’s how you get deterrence,” said Franco.
Now, he said, Israel has a window of several weeks in which it can decide whether it wants to escalate into a full-scale war or pressure Hezbollah into a diplomatic arrangement.
“The idea that Israel only had a 48-hour window to take advantage of the attacks is nonsense,” he said, pointing at the enduring effects on command and control and citing chaos in Hezbollah’s ranks.
Moreover, if Hezbollah wants to exact a measure of revenge on Israel — as Nasrallah has threatened — the aftermath of the attack is “not a good situation for it,” Franco argued.
If war does break out, Israel has plenty of tricks up its sleeve, Franco said without elaborating.
