Before Israel detonated thousands of pager and radio devices carried by Hezbollah senior officials and members, there were reports that it had been manipulating the Global Positioning System in a tactic known as “GPS spoofing”.
Such tactics are usually used against hostile missile attacks, which interfere with guidance systems. While strikes can be repelled by GPS spoofing, it is also dangerous, interrupting the operations of aviation technology—including over the Mediterranean—and regular users navigating in cars and for deliveries. There was also disruption to important civil infrastructure.
Israel initially denied responsibility but later admitted to being behind what it called a “GPS outage.” In July, Lebanon lodged a complaint with the United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) regarding manipulating GPS.
Amid the current threat of a full-scale war, there are serious concerns that Israel might cut Lebanon’s connection to the world by bombing the undersea cable that provides access to the internet.
There are other ways in which internet access can be disrupted. The telecommunications switching gear required needs a supply of diesel. Maintenance teams from Ogero, the executive body of the Ministry of Telecommunications, need to be able to work. The disruption caused by the July 2006 war—when Israel blockaded Lebanon and fuel ran short—is still fresh in the minds of Lebanese.
Warnings and threats
And now there are fresh fears over the security of the telecommunications network after Israel used it to stoke fear by sending tens of thousands of warning messages. Residents in Lebanon received automated telephone messages and text messages warning them to evacuate their homes, which are likely to have been orchestrated by Israel.
As Israel intensifies its attacks on Lebanon, eerie messages have been arriving on the phones of civilians on both sides of the border, with authorities in each country accusing the other of psychological warfare. https://t.co/fopbBXrFz9
— WIRED Science (@WIREDScience) September 26, 2024
According to Imad Kreidieh, who spoke to Reuters, the director-general of the national telecoms firm Ogero, over 80,000 such calls were made. They were not just received in southern Lebanon, toward the border with Israel, where the attacks were being made. Residents of the town of Ghazieh near Sidon received landline calls from Israel, ordering them to leave their homes immediately.
Lebanese citizens in Beirut and its southern suburbs received messages, including via mobile phones, warning them to stay away from Hezbollah sites until further notice. They were told that anyone near the party’s installations and weapons would be risking their lives.
Government officials also received the warnings. Ziad Makari, the caretaker minister of information, received one saying the building should be evacuated. Mohammad Wissam Mortada, the minister of culture, received a warning call from someone speaking classical Arabic with a strange accent, urging them to leave the office immediately.
Amin Salam, the caretaker minister of economy and trade, also received a suspicious message from an unknown source. Throughout, false reports and rumours of other messages created a feeling of uncertainty and chaos.
The Ministry of Telecommunications said that Israel did not need to breach the security of Lebanon’s official telecommunications network to send the messages, which came as part of a low-tech effort to get round measures to block calls originating from Israel. The ministry is moving to a different system which will be less prone to such attacks.
But doubts have been voiced about whether the change—to a different form of digital communication—will work and whether the system was breached. Dr Abdel-Munem Youssef, a former director-general for investment and maintenance at the ministry and former director-general of Ogero, said: “How does this relate to securing networks and protecting them against Israeli breaches?”, adding: “If these deceptions and frauds via electronic applications don’t constitute a breach, then what do they represent?”
Current Ogero director-general Kreidieh also denied there was a security breach, rather “a circumvention of the international code system” which blocks calls from Israel. “If the enemy calls via a foreign code, this isn’t considered a breach of the system”, he said.
But Youssef insisted to Al Majalla that a breach occurred because messages cannot be sent to Lebanese mobile devices on the Alfa and Touch networks without the main Ministry of Telecommunications network being hacked.
