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I'm kind of guessing, from the strength of the explosion in the video -- it really was a small explosion, not bursting into flames -- that somehow rigged pagers were inserted into Hezbollah's equipment prior to distribution to operatives.
But if this was, instead, some kind of remote software compromise of battery management system firmware for lithium batteries, now I have one more thing to worry about in my life, with all the devices with lithium batteries I have.
looks warily at laptop on my chest
EDIT: Strengthening my concerns, in the CNN article I linked to in my other comment, the devices were termed "hacked" by Lebanese internal security forces. Now, okay, that's a report immediately after the event, and I don't know how much time they have had to actually do analysis. Or if they're right. But:
...it sure doesn't assuage my concerns at all. Even if you couldn't make a BMS discharge lithium batteries hard enough to explode, you definitely can make them do so hard enough to make a pretty unpleasant fire. You do that with numerous laptop-sized devices all over a country, that'd potentially be a pretty unpleasant event.
sighs
Maybe it's possible to mandate that lithium-ion devices conforming to some sort of safety certification standard, like UL or something, have non-updatable-firmware hardware putting a physical limit on discharge rate. I don't think that that'd add too much cost or too many restrictions to devices.
EDIT2: From this YouTube video, it sounds like as long as you're not using sketchy battery cells in the device you're building, that battery manufacturers already take this into consideration via a blowout hole:
All that being said, I wouldn't be surprised if I have some devices with sketchy cells...but my guess is that at least in my collection, when it comes to large-battery-capacity, Internet-connected devices capable of firmware updates, stuff like laptops, they're probably -- hopefully -- using legit battery cells.
I don't believe small lithium batteries can explode like that. Not even big car batteries explode like that. They make a big fire but not this kind of explosion.
Either explosives were implanted somehow by IDF in the supply chain, or Hezbollah is crazy enough to put explosives there, just in case the devices fall in enemy hands, and IDF learned that and trigger the explosions remotely.
If it's an 18650, which is a pretty common small lithium cell, it looks like it can. Here's one exploding after being shorted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDaPP-dI9dE
That being said:
The cells cannot themselves have current regulation sufficient to avoid a fire or explosion. My vague understanding from past reading is that typically, if you buy an 18650, it'll have internal regulation, but not all do -- it adds to the cost and reduces capacity. But you'd only want an unregulated 18650 if you were putting it in a device that you would trust to regulate the thing. I believe I was reading about it in the past in the context of high-end flashlights that took removable 18650s, was telling people not to try and use unregulated 18650s, as then you're trusting the flashlight's firmware to properly limit the discharge rate.
The battery would have to be the first point to go if the external BMS circuitry just let the thing discharge as quickly as possible. Like, if you had small-enough connections or something, I'd imagine that they'd melt first, act like a fuse.
From the video I read above, lithium batteries from reputable manufacturers tend to have blowout holes to prevent exactly this -- if the electrolyte starts to boil, then they'll start venting vapor. They may catch fire from the heat, but it should prevent the pressure buildup from reaching the point where the battery explodes. They say that counterfeit cells may not have vents that work correctly.
So I can believe that there are devices out there at risk. But I would guess that most devices probably aren't. That is, you could maybe make devices catch fire, and that could be bad if done at mass scale at the same time, but probably most wouldn't explode.
Even on that above 18650 that exploded, you could see vapor coming out prior to the explosion. According to that video I linked above about exploding lithium batteries, it sounds like the issue is more that on some counterfeits, the pressure release system doesn't work properly rather than that it doesn't exist at all -- I didn't quote the text, but they went more into depth on it after the bit I quoted. But I suppose that if there were no presssure release at all, that it could probably get more pressure buildup before exploding.
If the device in my pocket started smoking like that, I'd throw it away pretty quickly. I suspect these were actual explosives, and there are almost certainly more of them out there.