(Paris) The simultaneous explosions that hit pagers belonging to Hezbollah in Lebanon have reawakened fears among some users that their smartphones might be hacked.
These pagers – or pagers –widely used in the 1980s and 1990s to transmit short messages, have been made obsolete by the arrival of smartphones. These small boxes use their own radio frequency without going through mobile phone networks, which can experience interruptions, connection problems or interception of communications.
While the modus operandi used to detonate devices in Lebanon has not yet been determined, videos of the damage have raised questions about the risks associated with using smartphones or computers.
The battery, the only element at risk
“The only element that can burn in a smartphone is the battery. That’s the problem with lithium-ion batteries,” explains Adrien Demarez, a telecom engineer.
These parts, which equip mobile phones, computers, or even cars, bicycles and electric scooters, can thus become “small bombs”, due to a risk of combustion of their components, explains the expert.
Although such accidents happen regularly, they remain relatively rare compared to the number of devices in circulation, says Sylvain Chevallier, a telecoms specialist and partner at the consulting firm Bearing Point.
As for the power of the explosion of these components, it also remains limited. “With the size of a smartphone battery, we are not on the same kind of explosion as what circulates on the videos of Hezbollah pagers,” points out Adrien Demarez.
An almost impossible operation
“Attacks on hardware do exist,” notes Adrien Demarez, referring to an experiment conducted in 2020 by a laboratory of the Chinese giant Tencent.
Dubbing their operation “BadPower,” the researchers claimed they were able to trigger the combustion of a smartphone by hacking chargers to cause an overcharge.
However, these attacks involved direct contact between a charger and a smartphone. “I’m not aware of any way to remotely detonate a battery on standard, unmodified hardware such as a smartphone,” Demarez said.
In the extreme case where a hack could manage to heat up a phone or computer battery, the operation would also be gradual and without any detonation effect.
A hacker with skills of this magnitude “will probably have better things to do than try to heat up an iPhone,” Chevallier says. The main risk in the event of a hack remains data theft.
The risk of production chains
In the event that an explosive charge was introduced into the pagers that exploded, the safety of the production lines also raises concerns.
Sylvain Chevallier points out that control over manufacturing “depends on each company”, but remains crucial with regard to the “brand image” that they wish to ensure.
On a completely different note, in 2016, Samsung phones were found to be at risk of catching fire and had to recall 2.5 million devices due to their defects. The South Korean group concluded that the batteries were the cause of the problem and ultimately stopped selling the model.