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The reason we don’t see exploding battery attacks more often is not because it’s technically hard, it’s because the erosion of public trust in everyday things isn’t worth it. (www.bunniestudios.com)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by cypherpunks@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world

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edit: after 20 comments, i'm adding a post description here, since most of the commenters so far appear not to be reading the article:

This is about how surprisingly cheap it is (eg $15,000) to buy a complete production line to be able to manufacture batteries with a layer of nearly-undetectable explosives inside of them, which can be triggered by off-the-shelf devices with only their firmware modified.

screenshot of paragraph from the article saying "The process to build such batteries is well understood and documented. Here is an excerpt from one vendor’s site promising to sell the equipment to build batteries in limited quantities (tens-to-hundreds per batch) for as little as $15,000:" followed by a screenshot of "Flow-chart of Pouch Cell Lab-scale Fabrication" showing a 20 step process

(page 2) 31 comments

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 0 points 2 months ago

Context: bunniestudios.com is run by bunnie, the guy who was involved with the hardware side of breaking DRM on the original XBox; he later went into consumer electronics manufacturing.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's also a big ass war crime. And if you did it habitually as anyone other than the West you could expect a visit from the US military. Inside the West you'd likely end up in prison. Except Israel. Israel is just immune to everything because uhhh... Because... Well nobody actually has a good reason.

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Because people are scared to be seen as an anti-Semite if you are critical of a Jewish state and their wrongdoings.

This is how Jeremy Corbyn got slammed as being an anti-Semite across the media and eventually kicked out of the labour party.

[–] Ilandar@aussie.zone 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Corbyn was also good friends with Ken Livingstone, who said some very strange things about Hitler and the Jews.

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago

Everyone's had dickhead friends

[–] AWittyUsername@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago

The jewish chronicle to thank for that.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 0 points 2 months ago (14 children)

Just to be clear, the pager thing wasn't exploding batteries, they had apparently been modified at the production level to have explosives in them, which could be triggered by the pager system itself.

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[–] OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 months ago

I'll never look at my phone the same way again

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 0 points 2 months ago

It's not just the batteries, you need a way to blow them up remotely and reliably.

This wasn't just some wonky batteries shoved into legit devices. This was an entire operation to make fake pagers and walkie talkies. The batteries were probably the only legit things in them.

Fortunately these are simple devices that you can probably replicate the guts of with a few dollars of off the shelf parts. You're not going to be able to fake an iPhone like this. Cheaper to just drop bombs at that point. And tbh, if it was something expensive like an iPhone, Hezbollah wouldn't have bought a thousand of them.

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