Tag Archives: Israel cyberattack Hezbollah

Paranoia: What Happens When the Enemy Can See You Naked

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During the 2025 Israel/U.S. war against Iran, Israeli authorities, and a pro-Israeli hacking group called Predatory Sparrow, targeted financial organizations that Iranians use to move money and sidestep the U.S.-led economic blockade…Predatory Sparrow…crippled Iran’s state-owned Bank Sepah, which services Iran’s armed forces and helps them pay suppliers abroad, knocking out its online banking services and cash machines…The group also breached Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, popular with locals for transferring money overseas. The hackers extracted about $100 million in funds and forced the platform to shut down, according to the exchange.

Iran’s government pulled the plug on much of the country’s online activities to prevent further attacks… Non-Iranian websites were blocked. Citizens were warned against using foreign phones or messaging platforms that it claimed could collect audio and location data for Israeli spies. Government officials were banned from using laptops and smartwatches.

Paranoia swept through the Iranian population as the attacks, both physical and cyber, mounted. “It’s better to cut [the internet] off. Israel can see everything,” said Mohammad Ghorbaniyan, a Tehran-based money changer whom the U.S. sanctioned several years ago for allegedly aiding Iranian hackers…Predatory Sparrow has been wreaking havoc on Iran since at least 2021. In earlier hacks, the group disabled gas-station payment systems across the country and triggered a fire at an Iranian steel plant. 

For their operation against Nobitex, the hackers managed to obtain the keys for the exchange’s cryptocurrency wallets, which were held by key personnel within the company…Predatory Sparrow then “burned” the stolen $100 million by sending the tokens to other digital wallets the group itself couldn’t access. These wallets’ addresses, which are made up of long strings of numbers and letters, contained profane phrases like “F—IRGCterrorists.”

Excerpt from Angus Berwick, How Israel-Aligned Hackers Hobbled Iran’s Financial System, WSJ, June 29, 2025

Can Your Smartphone Kill You? You Bet.

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On September 17, 2024, nine people, including a child, have been killed after handheld pagers used by members of the armed group Hezbollah to communicate exploded across Lebanon, the country’s health minister says. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was among 2,800 other people who were wounded by the simultaneous blasts in Beirut and several other regions. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, said the pagers belonged “to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions” and confirmed the deaths of eight fighters…Hours before the explosions, Israel’s security cabinet said stopping Hezbollah attacks on the north of the country to allow the safe return of displaced residents was an official war goal.

Hezbollah said an unspecified number of pagers – which the group relies on heavily for communications due to the risk of mobile phones being hacked or tracked – exploded at around 15:30 local time (12:30 GMT) (September 17, 2024) in the capital Beirut and many other areas. One CCTV video showed an explosion in a man’s bag or pocket at a supermarket. He is then seen falling backwards to the ground and crying out in pain as other shoppers run for cover. Hours later, ambulances were still rushing to hospitals overwhelmed with the number of casualties, 200 of whom the health minister said were in a critical condition. Most of the wounds were at the level of the waist, face, eyes and hands, he said, adding: “A lot of casualties have lost fingers, in some cases all of them.”

Overheated lithium-ion batteries can catch fire, but experts said hacking into the pagers and making them overheat would not usually cause such explosions. A former British Army munitions expert, who asked not to be named, told the BBC the pagers would have likely been packed with between 10g and 20g of military-grade high explosive, hidden inside a fake electronic component. Once armed by a signal, called an alphanumeric text message, the next person to use the device would have triggered the explosive, the expert said.

On September 18, 2024, walkie-talkies detonated in Lebanon, killing at least 20 people and wounding 450 in a fresh attack targeting Hezbollah, a day after pager blasts killed at least 12 people, including children, and injured thousands across the country

Excerpt from David Gritten, Hezbollah blames Israel after pager explosions kill nine and injure thousands in Lebanon, BBC, Sept. 18, 2024